


In Scorched Places

by nirejseki



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/M, Gen, Jaeger Pilots, Kaiju, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-08
Updated: 2016-07-20
Packaged: 2018-07-22 06:03:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7422802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jefferson Jackson gets railroaded into the Jaeger Program and meets Mick Rory.  It's the best thing that's ever happened to him.</p><p>(Pacific Rim AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Jax escapes to a quiet spot in the gigantic garage where they stored the Jaegers while they are under repair as soon as he can ditch his newfound entourage. This is so incredibly _not_ what he signed up for – his mother’s lips had trembled and she’d hugged him so tight he thought his ribs had cracked, and that was just when he told her he was planning on getting a job with the Jaeger program as a _mechanic_. 

He’d just wanted to do something to help the war effort. 

Apparently, fate had something more personal in mind for him than helping repair the Jaegers.

God, Jax never even _considered_ signing up to pilot a Jaegar – who was he going to be drift compatible with, anyway? It was mostly siblings, spouses, parents and kids; who was he going to force to go into battle with him, his works-two-jobs Mom? His often sick grandma? The cousins he saw only at the occasional family event? The friends that he saw once in a while, most of them having drifted away after high school, concerned with their own careers and their own relationships and their own lives?

Besides, the casualty rate for Jaeger pilots was too high. He couldn’t do that to his mom. 

It was pure coincidence that Jax ended up sitting next to that tired-looking professor on the train to the STAR Shatterdome. It wasn’t even like they got along – Grey insulted his taste in music, Jax told him what’s what, and they both realized around the five minute point that they were enjoying their bickering, so they kept it up until the final station as a way to pass the time.

Grey wasn’t the one to yank him into the testing line for drift compatibility; he drifted off in classic absent-minded physics professor haze. No, it was the quiet girl sitting across from them on the train, who introduced herself as Caitlin Snow and who turned out to be the widow of Grey’s _last_ drift compatible partner, Ronnie Raymond. 

Jax’s DNA turned out to be a good match for Grey, same as a guy named Hewitt. Jax was complimented, but figured that was it – they still had to do the test for compatibility, of course, but obviously hoity-toity Professor Grey was going to be more in tune with a lab guy with a degree and a “refined palette”, whatever the hell that was, than an auto mechanic who couldn’t afford college even at the drop-dead low rates offered by places on the coastline like Stanford. 

Then the Kaiju attack alarm had gone off, and there wasn’t enough time to think too much.

The Flash team (adopted siblings Barry Allen and Iris West) were usually in charge of defending this particular area, but they were hundreds of miles away by Starling City, helping Arrow (siblings Oliver and Thea Queen) and Canary (siblings Laurel and Sara Lance) clean up after an attack _there_. The Flash was fast, the fastest Jaeger around, but the amount of destruction the Kaiju could wreak over their unfinished Wall before the Flash could get back to fight it was unthinkable.

The only functioning Jaeger available to protect the city was Grey’s Firestorm, and Firestorm hadn’t been activated since Ronnie Raymond’s death.

They skipped the testing.

Grey and Hewitt tried the neural interface, but it fried out and nearly killed both of them. Not drift compatible, not even a little, DNA be damned. Grey turned to Jax, eyes bloodshot, and said, “I know this isn’t what you’d planned, Jefferson–”

And Jax said yes. 

Without even thinking twice. 

The neural interface snapped into place, as easy as breathing, and the Drift was like nothing Jax’d ever seen-heard-thought before. They _worked_ , him and Grey, and Jax suddenly knew so many things he hadn’t known before, physics formulas snapping into place as he calculated angles and the beautiful math of his precise football-trained movements, which he’d known in theory but had never seen this clearly…it was something else. It was really something else. 

Most Jaegar teams spoke about sharing the burden of the Drift, being in perfect sync; before they’d synced up, Jax had thought there was no way they could work, him and Grey, that they couldn’t sync up, that his kinetic style and Grey’s pure intellect weren’t compatible at all, but somehow it worked. Jax took the body, the movements, leaving Grey to focus on the mind – collecting data for the future, giving advice, making sure they caused as little destruction to the city as possible and scanning the Kaiju for soft spots to focus on.

Meanwhile, Jax kicked some Kaiju _ass_.

They ended up ripping that thing apart, head to toe, directing the inevitable spray of Kaiju Blue into safe zones as best as they could, and then headed back to the city, cleaning up what they could before returning to the Shatterdome, and then it was been wave after wave of people congratulating them, cheering them on, celebrating the return of the great Firestorm, new and better than ever…

And all Jax was able to think about was how he didn’t know if his mom was watching TV right now, but he really hoped she wasn’t. She didn’t deserve to find out like this. 

Jax tried to escape the first chance he got, but everywhere he went people wanted to talk to him. He got forced into a tour of the Shatterdome – mess hall, science labs, living quarters, garage, training room, rec room, gear up room – and everyone had something to say to him or wanted to shake his hand or pat him on the back or…

Eventually Jax pled the need for the restroom and bolted. He found his way back to the garage and found this quiet spot to curl up. How had everything gotten so fucked up? He’d wanted to be a _mechanic_ , for christssakes, not a pilot. 

He’d just wanted to _help_.

“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice says, interrupting his gloomy thoughts.

Jax sighs and lifts his head from his knees. He can’t see who’s talking from this angle, but does it really matter? Not like he knows anyone here. All of his family and friends are back in Central. 

“I don’t want to talk about it,” he shouts in the general direction of the guy.

“I don’t give a damn about what you do or don’t want to talk about,” the man calls back. “But if you can toss me that wrench you’re sitting on, I’d appreciate it.”

Jax looks down. He wouldn’t personally call that thing a wrench – it’s about the size of a crowbar – but yeah, he was totally bracing his feet against it. He picks it up and gets up, turning to see…

Holy crap, that’s Mick Rory.

“You’re _Mick Rory_ ,” Jax blurts out like a total _idiot_ , then winces at his own inanity. 

Rory does not appear particularly impressed with Jax right now, but in fairness, the few times he’s been seen on television, he didn’t look particularly impressed with anything. 

Mick Rory might not be that well known to most people, but Jax came here for a mechanic job. _Of course_ he knows Mick Rory. This isn’t just the guy who runs the local Jaegar repair program, probably best known to the public as the guy who stormed up to the Flash team after one particularly risky battle and slapped both Barry Allen and Iris West upside the head, telling them that if they played fast and loose with _his_ Jaeger ever again, he was going to take their toys away until they learned better. Oh, no. Mick Rory’s much more than that. 

This is the guy who builds the Jaegers in the first place.

Sure, Rory may not have invented the Jaegars – that privilege belongs to Harrison Wells, now part of Jaeger Admin – but he’d perfected them. Wells’ Jaegers were decent enough for the job they were called upon to do; Rory’s are beasts of awesome, breathtaking power. They come in all shapes and sizes and abilities and Rory keeps churning them out, one after the other, empty Jaegers in need of pilots to fill them – so different from the Mark I Wells versions, which were tailored for specific people who then needed to find their compatible partners. That process could take months that no one could spare; Rory’s Jaegers weren’t geared towards any people in particular, enabling pairs of individuals already established as compatible with each other to suit up and take ownership. It had revolutionized the Jaeger program and rebooted Earth’s defensive line.

There’s a reason Jax came _here_ for a job, not one of the other coasts, not somewhere along the Wall where it might be safer, and that reason is named Mick Rory. 

“I, uh, just wanted to say, um, I’m a really big fan of yours,” Jax tells him, knowing it’s cliché and everything, but wanting to get it out anyway. He’s got so much respect, he can’t even begin to express it. 

Rory grunts. “You a mechanic?” he asks. 

“Yeah, I –”

“What’s your background?”

“I – background? Uh, I mean, I worked at Ed’s Auto Shop back in Central City for two and a half years after I graduated high school, I helped out with some of my cousin’s projects before that for years – won this mechanical engineering prize once back in middle school –”

Yeah, Jax’s resume is total crap and he knows it. He was kinda counting on there being a desperate need for mechanics not afraid to live in a Kaiju high-risk zone.

“Central, huh?” Rory says thoughtfully. “Ed’s – that’s the one on Milligan Avenue, isn’t it?”

Jax gapes. Holy shit, _Mick Rory_ knew about the crappy often-illegal (okay, mostly illegal) auto chop shop joint his cousin’s former college roommate ran?

“Uh, yeah, that’s the one –”

“Good enough for me,” Rory says briskly. “I’ll kick you out if I don’t like you. Grab that box to your left and find yourself an apron; you’ll need something flame-resistant.”

“Need something…for what?”

Rory gives him a sour look. “Not sure if you’ve noticed, kid,” he drawls. “But Firestorm nearly lost a foot today and someone’s got to piece him back together. And I don’t see anyone else here but you and me.”

“Hey, that tail came out of nowhere and – oh, wait, are you asking _me_ to help you fix it?”

Rory’s opinion of Jax’s intelligence seems to be going down. “You came here for a mechanic job, didn’t you?”

“Well, yes, but –”

“Good. You’re hired, confirmation pending my evaluation of your competence. Let’s go.”

“But, you don’t understand – I just got signed up to _be_ Firestorm. I mean, as a pilot. Not a mechanic. I’m the new pilot, along with Grey – uh, Professor Stein, I mean.”

Rory crosses his arms. “You lose all that mechanics learning of yours into the Drift?” he asks.

“Uh, no?”

“Then you can still work. Box, apron, follow me.”

Jax follows.


	2. Chapter 2

Meeting Mick Rory is easily the best thing that’s happened to Jax ever since the Breach opened up and he saw his chance to parlay football into a college scholarship disappear. 

Every time the paparazzi start to swarm him, Rory just stomps up and scares them all away (there are rumors that he once threatened to use particularly annoying members of the media as human sacrifices to his Jaegers – given Rory’s size, general disposition, and the fact that the government would probably think it was a worthwhile exchange if it killed a few more Kaiju, the paps tend to scatter at the mere sight of him now). Every time Jax is sick and tired of Grey poking around in his brain or insisting they work on their training some more, he can say that he’s needed in the garage. It’s not a lie – there’s always work to do there. 

He has friends, too. Not that he didn’t have friends back in high school, but a lot of them liked him for his football stats and thought he was nuts for coming to STAR to help with the war effort. But somehow Jax just _clicks_ with the other people here, the way he clicked with Grey. 

His best new friends are other mechanics, obviously: one of the first ones that introduced themselves to him, Ray Palmer, is basically the definition of a cheerful, friendly optimist. He’s also a bit of a nerd who spends as much time trying to refine his special shrinking/growing technology for the ATOM, a Jaegar Mick designed years ago and left empty and which Ray has basically claimed for himself if only he can find someone drift compatible to pilot it with, as he does his job repairing the working Jaegers. 

Then there’s the ones that are closer to his age: Wally West and Jessie Quick (who turns out to be _Harrison Wells’_ daughter, holy crap, Jax is so happy he didn’t find out about that until he’d already gotten to the crude-jokes-and-shoulder-punches stage with her), who are both awesome and inventive and the _best_ buddies a guy could have, particularly when you feel like going out for late night restaurant runs at three in the morning and talking about absolutely nothing at all. They basically adopt him into their group with hugs and cries of “thank god Rory’s hired another one we need help so bad now what do you know about engines?”, followed shortly by offers of cheap Chinese food and invitations to movie nights. Jax has no idea when exactly they became friends; it almost feels like one minute he’s there alone and the next he’s joking around with them, fencing with crowbars, like he’s known them his whole life.

Lastly, of course, there’s Shawna Baez, who Jax acknowledges as the queen of all she surveys, mistress of the neural net installation and also of Jaeger detailing, and Jax bows before her (she’s perfect in every way, except maybe for her endless stream of terrible ex-boyfriend stories). She’s always gliding in and out of the Shatterdome, appearing just when you need her for something and disappearing the next section. It’s like magic. Jax wishes he could pick up that trick, particularly when Grey is looking to do some extra training with the Drift.

Even going outside STAR, the mechanics teams are universally awesome. Felicity Smoak, who runs the Starling Shatterdome and is indisputably the best Shatterdome programmer in the world, swings by on one of her many visits, and she’s pretty hilarious. Especially when it turns out all those rumors about her notorious lack of filter and tendency towards accidental innuendos turn out to be _understated_ , if anything, holy crap. Also, apparently Wally and Jessie weren’t kidding when they said that once you get to know her, she’s basically the world’s easiest go-to hacker hotline – Jax finally gets confirmation from inside his old high school’s servers that his evil junior-year English teacher _was_ trying to sabotage his grades, or at least had gotten overruled by the principal about them. Also, per Wally’s investigative efforts, the local pizzeria has them down in their system as “VIP” customers. There was no reason to hack that, but it’s just _cool_.

Jax starts to get to know the rest of the Shatterdome crew, too, outside of the mechanics and not just Grey and him. There are the other Jaeger pilots, of course: Barry and Iris are fantastic, even if they are both always hyper as hell. Jax is a bit intimidated meeting people he’d only ever heard about on the news, but it turns out they’re super nice and almost overwhelmingly friendly. It helps that they’re fellow cityfolk: both of them also hail from Central City and the three of them immediately bond over the Shatterdome's vile and inadequate substitute for Jitters. Pre-Breach, Barry used to be a CSI and Iris was working as a reporter – “Barely more than an intern,” she tells him ruefully. “Paper media, you know; the way things were going before the original incursion, even Central City Picture News couldn't afford to pay baby reporters more than peanuts” – but they were also the very first effective dual Jaeger team, utilizing the neural net, and now they juggled the jobs of active-duty Jaeger team, tutors to new Jaeger teams worldwide, and public relations sweethearts selling the efficacy of the Jaeger program to the public. “Just you wait,” Barry says with fond but slightly malicious glee, “you're young and appeal to certain demographics, the PR harpies are sure to descend on your head soon enough. _Especially_ since you just saved STAR Shatterdome from a sneak Kaiju attack. Welcome to the not-so-fun part of saving the world: it involves cue cards and excessive makeup."

The Hawk team, piloted by Carter Hall and Kendra Saunders, swings by the STAR Shatterdome once on their international circuit, and they’re nice enough, though Jax feels almost obligated as a mechanic to give Kendra some shit. Apparently she dated Ray for a while when she and Carter were on the outs, seriously enough that they’d even gotten engaged, and then she dropped him like a hot rock when Carter showed back up again. Even if Ray’s okay with it, which he keeps claiming that he is (spouting out some bullshit about it being a learning experience), none of the other mechanics are and there’s a lot of hissing behind her back that Ray keeps trying unsuccessfully to quell. 

Jax even briefly meets the main Starling teams: the Arrow, the Spartan and the Canary (Oliver is a jackass, Sara and Lyla are both terrifying, Diggle is nice, Laurel and Thea can pretend to be human beings but are actually _devils in disguise_ , like, who the hell even uses prank shop toys past the age of twelve anyway?) Between them and the STAR Shatterdome teams, they make up the North American Jaeger teams, patrolling the Breaches off of their territory and keeping in regular contact with the South American, Australian-Pacific Islander Alliance, the joint Asian teams and the Russian squad, all of whom dealt with the Breaches that lay off of _their_ territories with Jaegers of their own designs and make. All of them are technically organized under the Pan-Pacific Defense Corps leadership; Jax was assured that he’d get to meet with the rest of the international contingent (popularly and lovingly referred to as “those crazy assholes” by just about everyone) at some point.

And then there’s the rest of the Shatterdome crew. There are the ever-intimidating heads of the Jaeger program at STAR: Harrison Wells, Joe West, and David Singh heading up the Jaeger program as Head of Science, Internal and External Security respectively; being sent to talk to them is not unlike being sent to the world’s scariest principal's office. There are the doctors, Caitlin Snow and Barry’s parents, Henry and Nora Allen, all of whom dominate the living daylights out of the med bay. There's even Gideon, the computer AI that runs the Jaeger docking station at the garage but which seems to have her own personality. 

And there’s the science crew, of course, Grey’s people.

Actually, Jax probably wouldn’t have met the science crew for a lot longer if hadn’t been for Barry; he’d been avoiding the area, figuring that he and Grey already saw enough of each other and not wanting to wear out his welcome, when one day Barry just came galloping up to him, Iris trailing behind him with an iced coffee and a smirk.

“Someone just pointed out that since you’re the new guy, I should totally haze you!” Barry says in his usual excitable manner.

Jax gives him a long, skeptical sidelong look. "...I don't see how that would be fun for me." 

"Well, no," Barry says apologetically. "But we promise to preserve the story for posterity and tell it to everyone?"

"This is your first time doing this whole hazing thing, isn't it?" Jax asks, amused despite himself. Barry's enthusiasm and good cheer are contagious no matter how stupid his ideas can be. And for someone who trained and even worked as a CSI before the war started, some of his ideas can be _really_ stupid. 

No one is going to help you break the space-time barrier to go back in time to stop the first breach, Barry. Not because it's implausible, but because you'll somehow find a way to make it much worse, we _know_ you will.

“I’m mostly working off of webcomics and bad movies,” Barry confesses without a shred of shame. “But it sounds like it’d be funny?”

"Webcomics. Uh-huh. Right," Jax says. Then, because his mama clearly raised a total moron, he adds, "...so what did you have in mind?"

Barry pauses, clearly not having thought that far ahead. Iris takes a sip of her coffee and says with an evil smirk, “Make him pick up the Wednesday schedules.”

“Isn’t that a bit mean?” Barry asks.

Iris pats him on the shoulder. “Barry, that’s sort of the point.”

And so Jax finds his way down to the science labs, looking to pick up some folder of lab schedules – the Jaeger program has a pretty narrow core science team willing to live and work in the danger zone and they have a lot of processing power, but given that these are the geniuses that are literally trying to science their way to the end of the war, they also need a lot of processing power, so there’s a whole schedule that gets set up every other Wednesday. All Jax needs to do is go pick it up and drop it off with Admin.

He’s suspicious.

He’s not suspicious _enough_.

The science labs are a freaking _war zone_ , with people bustling around frantically as other people shout out instructions and there is yelling and snarling and someone may or may not be about to die, if Jax is interpreting the wave of noise that hits him smack in the face the second he opens the door right. 

Some short guy in glasses catches sight of Jax standing there, gaping like an idiot, and shoves something into his hands. “Hold this and _don’t move_ ,” he orders and sweeps away. Jax blinks down at his hands, not sure what the hell he’s holding, but fairly sure it’s pretty breakable. It’s some sort of glass model.

“ – you don’t understand, I _need_ the lab space!” someone is whining. It’s a Hispanic guy, long hair pulled back in a ponytail that’s quickly coming undone, and he’s waving his hands around like a crazy person. “I’ve got an experiment in the works and it’s a very delicate stage –”

“You traded it away last week for your Kaiju blue chemoanalysis,” a tall, thin man reminds him. That guy, even Jax recognizes: Harrison Wells, inventor of the Jaegers, Jessie’s notoriously overprotective dad, and Head of Science. “You can’t get it back now.”

“But _Harry_ – ”

“Why are you standing there like an idiot?”

It takes Jax a minute to realize that the last part is being addressed to him.

He turns around and immediately takes a step backwards. The guy in front of him is tall and lean, dressed all in black and leaning heavily on a cane, and he’s got an expression that suggests he’s contemplating murder – and also that he’s done it before and will happily do it again. 

“I, uh,” Jax says, then offers up the model helplessly. “He said not to move?”

The man in front of him sneers. “Maybe someplace that _ain’t_ the front door?” he says, voice poisonous, before visibly dismissing Jax and turning to stop off, tread heavy, where Harrison Wells is still arguing about lab space.

“I’m taking 35% of computing power tomorrow through Friday,” he announces.

Both Wells and the other guy turn to him with expressions of dismay. “You can’t do that!” the younger man exclaims.

“You didn’t book the time –”

The guy with the cane arches an eyebrow. “Watch me. I’ve got IOUs from everyone else here, so the time’s mine. Have fun apportioning out the rest – oh, wait, neither of you’ll be able to run your projects if that much space is being taken up, will you? Oh, well. You’ve got two hours to make me a better offer or all those pretty little projects you have up in the air go boom. Literally, in Ramon’s case.”

With that pronouncement, he turns on his heel and limps away, leaving both of them gaping at him for a second before they both chase after him, yelling angrily.

The short guy with the glasses from earlier reappears and snatches the glass model away from Jax before hurrying after the three of them, shouting something about needing some time himself.

“Are you here for the Wednesday list, dear?” an amused female voice says behind him.

Jax turns – and smiles with relief. Clarissa Stein, Grey’s wife; he’d never met her in person, only in Grey’s part of the Drift, but he instinctively feels at home with her anyway. “Yeah,” he says ruefully. “Not ready yet?”

“Not in the slightest,” she says with a smile. “Try again in two hours; it’ll be done by then – Leonard is never wrong when it comes to timing.”

“Leonard?” Jax echoes. “Who is…? Who are _any_ of them?”

Clarissa laughs. “Well,” she says, tapping her finger on her chin. “I'm sure you know Harrison Wells, our dear Head of Science. The charming young man with the long hair that he was talking with is Cisco Ramon, our local biotech genius and Kaiju expert. You might know him better as ‘the guy that names all the Kaiju’, as I believe the mechanics call him.”

Jax laughs. Yeah, he’s heard of that guy. He’s got a way with names. 

“The one with the cane is Leonard Snart. He’s…well, he’s constantly sarcastic, but his mind for mathematics is peerless – you’d probably know him primarily by the fact that it’s his intellect that terrifies Martin, not his quips or his, ah, rather unfortunate occasional tendency towards violence. The one whose model you were holding was Hartley Rathaway – I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him, but his studies on vibrations and frequencies have provided a number of key insights on the origins of the Breach. And then there’s Martin, of course, who you know quite well.” 

“Hard to miss the illustrious Professor Martin Stein, self-professed physics genius, especially when you’re sharing brain space,” Jax says dryly. “I gotta say, though, I agree with Grey on this one: you are the _infinitely_ classier science genius of the two of you.”

Clarissa laughs and shoos him off.

(Jax does eventually pry the Wednesday schedules out of the science lab, but he doesn’t let Barry and Iris assign him anything _ever again_. It’s not like they didn’t tell him it would be awful, but _seriously_.)

Really, Kaiju aside, it’s all been pretty great. 

Jax has always loved to be part of a team; it was his favorite part of playing football in high school, and this is like that but magnified on a much larger scale. Oh, and they get to save the world and be heroes. What’s not to like?

Now if only he and the other mechs could convince Rory to come out of his cave sometime. 

Jax knew coming in that Rory was a tireless builder of new Jaegers, no matter the budget or the restrictions or the new tech people sent him (sometimes unsolicited!) to incorporate into them. Hell, Rory’s notorious for building them so fast and so different that even the Kaiju couldn’t keep up with their changing approach. Cisco and Snart put their heads together a year or so back and come up with a presentation about the likelihood of the Kaiju being intelligent beings or at least controlled by them – no one wanted to believe it, preferring to think of the Kaiju as mindless rage monsters, but Cisco pointed out their increasing effectiveness against the Wells style Jaegers and demonstrated that the rate of adjustment couldn’t be attributed to luck or natural development, but only to a calculating mind. People might still have ignored him (Cisco was young, dressed unprofessionally, and could sometimes be what Admin liked to call “over-exuberant”) if it hadn’t been for Snart backing him up, steely-eyed, with cold, hard, unquestionable math behind him. The two of them together tended to steamroll anyone in their path; Jax had seen it happen. 

So, yeah, Rory working to make new Jaegers all the time made a lot of sense. 

Jax just hadn’t realized how much _time_ Rory spent doing it. 

There’s “it’s important to the war effort” work, and then there’s “what are you even building – is that _weather manipulation_ tech – what the hell are you even doing with that? – you realize we already have several Jaegers to spare, right?” work. 

Rory just works and works and works and _works_.

The only time he ever takes a break, as far as Jax knows, is to sleep, eat, and watch the Kaiju fights for new ideas.

Jax corners him in (big surprise) his office late one night – the whole room is a mess, blueprints everywhere, machine parts piled up at random, post-it notes with potential ideas covering what looked like an old warehouse door pulled off its hinges, so many old pizza boxes they might be able to build a Jaeger out of the spare cardboard – and asks him, “Do you even know what it’s like to have a good time anymore?”

“Sure I do,” Rory replies, not looking up from where he’s got the guts of the control panel of something Cisco’s been calling the “weather wand” splayed out all over his favorite desk. Favorite being because the other one is covered in junk and old-looking blueprints with marks in two shades of colored pencil all over them. Why Rory even _has_ two desks in his office, Jax has no idea. 

“Really,” Jax says. “’cause I haven’t seen too much evidence of that since I got here six months ago.”

“I like making Jaegers,” Rory says. “And I like burning shit. Both of which I get to do in my day job; how convenient.”

“There’s gotta be something else you like to do for fun.”

Rory hums, still focused on the pieces in front of him. He’s got out his fine-toothed tools and is carefully readjusting a gear with the sort of precision you’d usually expect to see out of a clock-maker. 

“You know what I used to do before I got this job?” he abruptly asks, apropos of nothing. 

Jax blinks a bit at the change in subject, but gamely asks, “What’s that?” 

Jax isn’t going to lie, he’s curious. All the bios he read, no one knew anything about where Rory came from, just that one day Wells was in charge of Repairs and then the next he’d gone over to Admin and left the developments of new Jaegers for the program in the hands of Rory, who no one had ever even heard of before. Both the PPDC and the government flipped their lids – right up until Rory’s first Mark II Jaeger pulverized a Kaiju ten miles out to sea before it even saw the city. They calmed down pretty quick after that. 

“I was a thief,” Rory says.

Okay, that was _not_ where Jax was expecting this story to go. “Really?”

“Yep,” he says, popping the sound out like a burst of bubble gum. “So, add another one to your list. I like stealing stuff. Of course, now that we – now that I’ve gone straight, it’s a bit looked down upon and all that.” He shifts the gear he’s working on again, a slight click sounding as it slides into place. “Pass me that black case over there, will you? On the shelf.”

On the shelf could mean a lot of different things, Jax thinks resentfully, because good lord if Rory isn’t the messiest man alive. He finds the case eventually – it’s pretty, made of leather, has an embossed _L_ on it – and brings it over. 

Rory flips it open – it’s a set of extremely fine tools, even smaller and more precise than the ones Jax is used to seeing Rory use for delicate calibration work – and selects one. He uses it to start adjusting another portion of the wand.

Jax decides to get back to the subject at hand. “We’d like you to come out with us,” he says coaxingly. “Just tonight. You can finish the…uh…whatever you’re doing for the Weather Wizard tomorrow, okay?”

Rory shakes his head mutely.

“C’mon, please? We’d really like you to come out with us, all of us. It’s just be us mechs. We’ll go drinking. It’ll be one night. You won’t even notice.”

“I’d notice,” Rory says, leaning over his work to concentrate more. “I’m not done yet.”

“Done with what?” Jax asks. “The Weather Wizard? Or the war in general?”

“None of them are right yet,” Rory says. 

“Huh? What do you mean?”

“The Jaegers.”

Now Jax really is confused. “Your Jaegers are amazing,” he says, puzzled. “Each one’s better than the next, everyone knows that. What more could you want?”

“None of them are right yet,” Mick just repeats. 

“What are you trying to make, then?” Jax asks. “The perfect Jaeger?”

“Not perfect,” Rory tells him. “Doesn’t have to be perfect. Just has to fit.”

“Fit what?”

Rory doesn’t answer.


	3. Chapter 3

Jax has been at the STAR Shatterdome nearly a year when there’s his first double event. He and Grey take one, Flash takes the other, but the Kaiju are really tough this time, clever. The one that goes up against Firestorm blitzes straight for their Jaeger’s chest, where the nuclear-powered engine sits, in what’s clearly a suicide run, since taking out the engine would basically nuke them and the Kaiju both, but luckily Rory put in an off switch that violently separates him and Grey from the Drift and shuts down the whole engine system super-fast just in case they’re at risk of going nuclear too close to a city. Jax hits it. 

They have to reboot the neural link in the middle of battle, which is just as horrific as one might imagine it to be.

They end up fighting the Kaiju hand-to-hand, grappling with it as it lashes at them with its tail like a whip and forcing it down into the water, one mechanical leg nearly torn off in the struggle. Jax ends up literally throttling it to death, which is both disgusting and painful given how much they get knocked around in that fight. He’s sore and he’s aching and even with Grey’s support Jax barely manages to drag Firestorm’s massive chassis back to base. They don’t even offer to help with clean up that time.

When they get back to the Shatterdome, it turns out the reason Jax’s leg hurts so much is that somewhere in that fight he’d torn his ACL.

It wasn’t like Jax was ever really _planning_ on going to back to football after the war was won, as it had really only ever been a path to college for him, but an ACL tear…well, that was it. Game over, man, game over, to quote a now bitterly ironic movie. No chance to play professional football now even if he wanted it. Even friendly games might be a struggle if he doesn’t carefully monitor his recovery.

Jax hides himself away from the others, carefully watching his leg and making sure he follows all the instructions from his doctor and doing all of his PT, but really, there isn’t much point in training with Grey until he gets better. If he gets better. And it isn’t like he’s any use with the mechanics, either; to repair Jaegers, you need to be fast and balanced and skillful – clambering all over those gigantic machines is a prerequisite for the job. 

So yeah, maybe he isn’t in the mood to see anyone and be reminded of how terrible his life is right now. 

He avoids Barry and Iris like the plague; smiles insincerely and nods when Wells and Singh give him a pep talk; he behaves abominably and snaps at Grey; he rejects all offers by Wally and Jessie and Shawna and Ray to go out and have some fun.

He just wants to be left _alone_.

After a few weeks of this behavior, Rory walks into Jax’s room and scoops him out of his seat without a word, tossing him over his shoulder, and shoving his crutches under his arm before heading out, Jax in one arm and crutches in the other.

Jax is so surprised he actually doesn’t manage to get out anything recognizable as words until they’re nearly halfway down the hallway, at which point he exclaims, “Put me _down_!”

“Nope.”

“I’m not kidding, Rory!”

“It look like I care?”

Rory deposits him on the sofa in his office, which has been considerately cleaned of old food containers and other such junk in preparation for Jax’s arrival.

“I’m not in the mood for this, Rory,” Jax tells him, scowling at his former boss.

“No, you’re in the mood to sulk,” Rory says. “That ain’t what I hired you for. I hired you to work.”

“But I _can’t_ work! I can’t even _move_ that much if I want my leg to get better!”

Rory snorts. “Like everything I do involves moving?” he says, tossing Jax one of the rolled up blueprints that had been lingering on the desk and then pegging him in the head with a pencil stub. “The proportions on that one are weird. Fix it.”

Jax looks down at the blueprints in his hands. It’s the hydraulics for Weather Wizard’s fist and yeah, they’re kinda wonky, though he can’t quite put his finger on the reason why. He hadn’t thought about the design portion of Jaeger repair; up until now, he’s been focusing on the hard labor portions, crawling around and fixing the gears, coordinating the cranes that put the various pieces back together, checking the chassis for cracks and other possible issues. Hell, just making sure all the joints are oiled up is a team effort – Jaegers are _huge_. He can’t do any of that any more with his leg like it is right now.

He can do this.

“You doing this because you feel sorry for me?” he asks.

Rory looks at him like he’s nuts. “I don’t do shit like that,” he says. “I just want to get some use out of you, that’s all.”

Jax goes to work with the pencil, feeling strangely pleased.

It’s a few hours later before Rory speaks again.

“Just ‘cause you get injured doesn’t mean you’re useless, you know,” he says. “Not like you’re the first one it’s happened to.”

“I know that,” Jax says, his festering anger burnt low through the hours of ceaseless mental exertion, as pleasant as stretching after a long time sitting still. He’ll have to talk to Grey about getting more of a share of the mind portion of the Jaeger work; he hadn’t even realized how tired he was of being seen as just the muscle. He’d forgotten how much he actually liked learning new things in school, and this is infinitely more interesting than homework. “It’s just…” He pauses. He’s not sure he can describe it. 

“It’s just that you can’t live your life the way you’re used to and that’s a hell of a shock to the system,” Rory finishes for him, voice low. “One day you could do everything the way you always did. Next day you can’t and everyone’s telling you that you might never do it again. It’s like your whole world turned upside down, and it happened so quick that you didn’t even have time to adjust.”

Jax swallows. “Yeah,” he says. “What…did that happen to you?”

No one ever _directly_ mentions the horrific burns on Rory’s shoulders and back, origin unknown but widely speculated on, but it’s not like they can’t all see them.

“Not to me,” Rory says. “A friend of mine.”

He hesitates, which is unusual, then blows out a sharp gust of air. “You know how the Breach got expanded? Why we’re dealing with all these multiple-point attacks, here and Starling and Lian Yu and all that, instead of being able to focus all our efforts together every time a Kaiju emerged like we could in the beginning?”

Jax blinks. Weird twist, but he figures Rory has a point to make with it. “Yeah, everyone knows. The government launched a nuke at the Breach after the first few Kaiju decimated the coasts and they thought they’d managed to shut it down, but then it popped back open and that’s when things got really bad, with new exit points all over.”

“You know _why_ the Breach expanded when it re-opened?”

“As far as I’ve always heard,” Jax says cautiously. “It was caused by some sort of spatiotemporal anomaly getting hit by a meteorite.”

‘Spatiotemporal anomaly’ had been the media’s new favorite word for weeks.

“Three meteorites, actually,” Rory tells him. “Except two of ‘em’d already landed.”

“What do you mean?”

“That spatiotemporal anomaly’s as regular as clockwork,” Rory says. “There’s plenty of them like that, all over. The government don’t want people to know that ‘cause then they’ll panic at the thought of another Breach –” Fair, Jax is doing a bit of panicking himself right now. “–except the anomaly’s harmless, normally. Spits out a few meteorites, or, well, whatever the hell you call rocks that come from another dimension instead of from outer space. They vibrate at a different frequency – you must’ve heard some of Rathaway’s rants on the subject?”

“Oh, have I ever,” Jax says, and Rory barks out a laugh.

“Well, a fucking crazy maniac by the name of Savage got his hands on two of the old meteorites and figured out that he could use them like weapons if only he could energize them from the Breach. He got involved with this cult, the Time Masters, and they built a fucking dimensional time bomb. Called it the Oculus. Swore up and down it was going to give them power over time itself; said it was the only way to defeat the Kaiju once and for all.”

Jax nods, fascinated. He’s never heard this version of the story before.

“A friend of mine and I, we’d already gotten involved with the anti-Kaiju project, though not in the same jobs as we’re in now. More of a consulting gig. This was way back at the beginning, when Wells had just started running the Jaegars and Gideon had just come online, and anyway, our group ended up figuring out that if the two meteorites Savage had and the one that was coming through the breach all got exploded at the same time using the Oculus as a jumping off point, it wouldn’t just expand the Breach, it’d destroy the world. Possibly time itself. So we had to stop it.”

Mick pauses, swallows. Stares at the wall in front of him like he’s seeing the events even now. “I was on the team sent to destroy the Oculus before it could be used as the trigger point. Turns out there was a fail-safe. Someone had to stay in there while it blew. I decided it should be me.”

“But you’re still alive..?”

“Yeah, ‘cause a friend of mine decided that I was being a right fucking moron and bashed me upside the head,” Mick says. “Got Sara – one of the girls who’s now in the Canary – to drag me out of there and took it on himself. He’d figured out how to disarm it without triggering the failsafe. But he spent so much time getting _me_ out of there that he couldn’t do it in time…he ended up getting thrown aside by the bomb. It was a dimensional bomb, you get me, so it didn’t just go boom like normal ones would, but the force of the explosion shattered virtually all the bones on his right side, from the tiny ones in his eardrum to the big ones in his leg.”

“Shit,” Jax says. 

“They managed to fix most of it,” Rory tells him, worrying the top of the desk with his fingernails, his gaze still a little lost. “The stuff they could get to, anyway. His hearing’s still shot. His hand loses its grip a lot. Shakes sometimes too, till he can’t even hold a pencil. Leg’s got more steel in it than some of my Jaegers. Hip’s still shot to pieces. They told him he’d never walk again, hip like that.” Rory’s lips curl up in a smile. “Like he’d let that stop him.”

That was _not_ a platonic smile. Did anyone else know that Rory had a boyfriend? Or was this more of an unrequited thing?

When Rory doesn’t speak again for a few minutes, Jax prods a little. “What happened next?”

Rory shrugs. “We couldn’t keep doing what we were doing before –” 

The other guy must’ve also been a thief. 

“–so we came here. I got a job fixing up the Jaegers. Just maintenance at first, but then I started improving them. Little bit here, little bit there, till I got so fed up with how ass-backwards Wells’ core design was that I just grabbed some spare parts and started making my own.” Mick’s lips twitched. “Wells’s never forgiven me for making a better Flash than his version. That old treacherous Mark I bastard got kept around for far too long – Barry called him Reverse Flash after a while, ‘cause he was such a pain to take out; he was meant to be for Wells himself till we all figured out Barry was a better pilot – before we finally sunk him for good. Threw him straight into the Breach like a nuke with arms when the Breach tried to pull a singularity on us.”

Jax had heard about that; the Flash’s sacrifice – a lot of people had thought Barry (at that point the sole pilot) was on board – was well known. Turned out it wasn’t Barry, who’d been piloting the new Flash with Iris on one of their first drift-compatible flights, but rather Eddie, Iris’ fiancée and Barry’s back-up pilot, who had made the final attack that closed the potential black hole in the making. He was well known throughout the world as a hero. 

“Anyway,” Rory says, shaking his head. “You can figure out the rest of it. The rest of the team managed to get to the other meteorites, stop the world from ending – killed that Savage bastard, too – but one of them got charged up too much and went off anyway. Ripped the Breach open even further. S’why we’ve got a permanent team by Starling, a permanent team here, another few teams scattered all around, each dealing with new Kaiju threats and only rarely able to take time off to help each other.”

“What about your friend? What happened to him?”

Rory’s face twists into something that definitely isn’t a smile. “Well, he woke up and got told that his life as he knew it was effectively over, then his best friend came and yelled at him as thanks for saving his miserable fucking life before he stormed out and left him to try to put himself back together alone. They don’t really…talk too much, anymore.”

Oh, boy.

“And that’s it?” Jax exclaims. “That can’t be it!”

“It’s not a fairytale, kid,” Rory snaps. “It’s real life.”

“Can’t you just apologize or something?”

“What do you think I’m _trying to do_?” Rory roars, leaping to his feet and waving his hands around at the room full of blueprints. “He won’t listen if I just say _words_ at him; he’ll never believe I mean them more than I meant what I said when I left him alone in that hospital bed. He needs _actions_. That’s always been the way, him and me; one of us fucks up, the other one does something to come clean. The bigger the fuck-up, the more you need to do to show you mean it. We were fighting even before it happened, you know? Over this. The Jaeger project. He wanted to help, I didn’t. I didn’t want to sign up to save the goddamn world. All I wanted was him and me. We had some bad moments there – remind me to tell you about the fucking Project Kronos thing sometime – but we were getting over it. He fucked me over once about it and he paid his dues for it, same as always; we were on the road to getting back to somewhere normal, and then the fucker goes and throws his life away for _me_.”

Rory falls back onto his chair hard. “I still don’t know why he did that,” he says, hands opening and closing spasmodically as he stares blankly at nothing at all. “Or maybe I do. Maybe I do know why. And that’s so much worse.”

Rory turns to look at Jax, and he’s got that manic fire in his eyes that he only ever gets when talking about his creations. “All Lenny wanted was to be a hero and he never thought he was good enough to be one,” he says. “Now he’s all fucked up and he thinks he’s lost his chance. I’m gonna give him that chance. I’m going to make him a Jaeger, just for him, and we’re going to fly it, him and me. None of them fit, not yet; I haven’t made the right one for us. But I’ll do it one day. I’m gonna build him the best fucking Jaeger that was ever made. Then – and _only_ then – we’ll be all right again. He’ll come back down here and take his fucking desk back and we’ll be just like we used to be. Better, even.”

Jax nods silently.

With a sigh, Rory unclenches his fists, turns away. “Sorry for dumping that on you, kid,” he says gruffly. “I don’t like seeing my friends get hurt, is all.”

“You don’t need to apologize to me,” Jax says instantly. “Just…” he hesitates. “Let us help?”

“What do you mean?”

“You haven’t found the right Jaeger design yet, right?” Jax asks. “Well, let us help. You’ve been making Jaegers for what, three, four years now. We’re your guys, Rory; the whole mechanics squad, we’re _with you_. We’re your team. Let us help you design something that’s just right.”

Rory looks at him for a long moment.

“Fine,” he says, pointing a finger at him. “But only ‘cause I feel sorry for you, got it?”

Jax beams.

It’s not until Rory has turned back to his work and Jax has taken his crutches down and hobbled halfway down the hallway that it abruptly strikes him that the mysterious “Lenny” Rory referenced as still working with the Jaeger program in some capacity could be none other than Leonard fucking Snart, _terror_ of the science department, who walks with a heavy limp and needs a cane but has literally shot at people who get in his way with an actual real-life _gun_ and to be honest, he could probably cut the Kaiju to pieces with the sharpness of his wit alone. 

Rory sure knows how to pick them.


	4. Chapter 4

“Leonard Snart and Mick Rory in a Jaeger,” Cisco says dreamily. “That would be, like, the most epic combo _ever_. Kaiju would _run and hide_ if they saw them coming.”

“But are they even drift compatible?” Hartley objects. He’s planted himself next to Wally, who has in turn slung an arm over his shoulders – something the normally notoriously twitchy Hartley doesn’t seem to be objecting to in the slightest. “I mean, their personality types aren’t exactly what you would call _similar_.”

“No kidding,” Jessie says. “Rory’s all fire and bluster and, you know, _awesome_ , while Snart’s mostly just a jackass with a heart of solid ice.”

“I wouldn’t call him a jackass,” Jax says, but somewhat doubtfully. Snart really is kind of a jackass. “Okay, point taken. Maybe he’ll cheer up if we can get him and Rory back together?”

“That would be great!” Ray says, hugging his knees and beaming. “We can parent trap them!”

“ _No_ ,” half the room says.

“For one thing, they’re not our parents,” Barry points out. “I have parents. They are overbearing and bossy and I wouldn’t trade them in for the world.”

“Not as bossy as my dad,” Iris says with a sigh. “But yeah. Snart as my dad? No thanks.” She smirks. “That way I’d have to feel bad for fantasizing about him.”

“ _Really?_ ” Ray says. “ _Snart?_ Why would you fantasize about him? He’s…well, he’s a jackass.”

“He’s a _really hot_ jackass,” Jessie says. Hartley nods. As do Cisco, Wally, Shawna, Caitlin, Iris and Barry. So, basically everyone who has a more-than-aesthetic appreciation for the masculine form. Though who knows with Barry; Jax certainly would not have described Clarissa as “hot” before he’d drifted so many times with Grey. 

“We’re getting away from the point,” Jax says, hastily shoving those disturbing thoughts back down the memory hole. “Which is how to fix this.”

“Because obviously this is more important than the potential triple-plus event that Snart’s models are predicting,” Wally says dryly.

“It’s certainly _way_ less depressing,” Cisco says. 

“Maybe we should start by figuring out how Snart feels?” Caitlin suggests. “About Rory, that is? It _has_ been years.”

Nods all around.

“So,” Shawna says. “That’s a good starting plan. Someone should go talk to him.”

Everyone looks at Cisco.

“Oh _hell_ no!” Cisco exclaims. “I’m not doing it!”

“Why not?” Jax asks. “You work in the same lab; you have plenty of opportunities to feel him out. Subtly.”

“I don’t think you understand,” Cisco says. “That man will _eat me alive_. He’s not just a jackass, he’s terrifying! You should’ve seen what he did to Dante when Dante erased one of his equations to play hangman on the whiteboard. It was vicious, man. I’ve seen kinder behavior on Animal Planet’s Shark Week. Or in _Kaiju_. I’m still not entirely convinced Snart _isn’t_ part Kaiju; he won't let me do a blood test.”

“Well, has he dated anyone else since Rory?” Iris says. “That shouldn’t be too hard to figure out.”

But Cisco is already shaking his head. “He gets asked out, like, a _lot_ ,” he reports. “At least since I’ve been part of the program. Sometimes it’s groupies, sometimes it’s staff, sometimes it’s locals, sometimes it’s _government funding agents_. He turns them all down flat. Either gender.”

“Icy reception?”

“Let’s put it this way,” Cisco says. “Cold enough to make Pluto’s surface look temperate.”

“Ouch. Even to the government agents?”

“They got a ‘no and fuck off’, which should tell you everything you need to know about what he said to the others.”

“So there’s hope!” Iris says. “He might still be pining.”

“He might not have human emotions,” Cisco replies. “Is there an appropriate Jaeger built for ‘evil heartless robot cyborg’?”

“Isn’t that _all_ Jaegers?” Jessie says.

They all think about that for a minute.

“Well, I certainly hope they’re not evil,” Caitlin says after a minute.

“For some reason this conversation reminds me of something,” Cisco says.

“Can we get back to planning on how we’re going to get them together?” Hartley says. “Some of us have work to do.”

“You know, you _also_ work in the labs,” Shawna says innocently. “ _You_ could ask Snart about his past relationships and/or current pining status.”

“You could not make me do that if you put a gun to my head,” Hartley says flatly.

“Which Snart might do,” Cisco mutters.

“But seriously, we need plans,” Ray says. “Get-them-together plans! What about, uh, breaking the elevator until they’re stuck in it together for a few hours?”

“You’re joking, right?” Wally says. “You do remember that Mick is the chief mechanic here, right? He’d fix it in a jiffy.”

“But if we jammed it in such a way that he couldn’t fix it from the outside…?”

“They’d probably just sit there awkwardly and do nothing while not looking at each other,” Jessie says glumly. “That’s what they do during senior staff meetings when they’re forced to sit next to each other.”

“We could take something important to Snart and leave it in Rory’s room?” Barry suggests.

Iris smacks him. “Barry, that would end with _murder_ , not _romance_. I’m not lending you any more of my romance novels.”

“But Iris, I wanna know what happens next in the one with the sexy Egyptologist!” 

“They get attacked by mummies, and don’t talk about those books in public where people can hear you. Maybe we could make them look for something _together_?”

“What, like a scavenger hunt?” Shawna scoffs. “They wouldn’t care enough.”

“What if we took something they _did_ care about? Snart has that ring he wears all the time...”

“I’m pretty sure I heard him tell my dad once that Rory gave him that,” Jessie says.

The entire room simultaneously makes shrieking cooing noises. Even the guys.

It’s so embarrassing that the entire room then immediately pretends they didn’t just do that.

“Let’s get away from the whole parent trap thing,” Jax suggests. “Maybe let’s get back to Rory’s original idea – what type of Jaeger would work for the two of them? Since nothing Rory’s built so far has fit.”

“Well, typically a Jaeger syncs up with a personality type,” Iris points out. 

“Yeah,” Wally says. “Like, Flash’s super-fast and super-cheerful, at least as far as a giant-death-robots go. And obviously that’s you and Barry: fast, cheerful death robots.”

“You’re still my little brother and I have a giant robot,” Iris replies, crossing her arms and mock-glaring amid everyone else’s laughter. “I would be afraid right now, Wally.”

“That just gets us back to the original problem of compatibility, though,” Hartley says. “I know Rory _wants_ to drift with Snart, but you don’t get to pick who your drift partner is or what type of Jaeger you sync up with. Their personalities aren’t anything alike. To be honest, they’re more like total opposites.”

“Yeah,” Ray says. “Rory’s messy, Snart’s a clean freak. Rory’s got a temper, Snart’s more of a ‘revenge served cold’ type. Rory tends to punch his problems away, Snart…”

“No, Snart sometimes punches his problems away too,” Jessie says. “He punched Dad in the face once when he disagreed with one of Snart’s modeling outputs – oh, don’t worry,” she says, catching the worried looks around the room. “Dad totally deserved it and he knew it.”

"Also, they used to be thieves, possibly together," Jax adds. He's still not over that little insight. 

“Okay, tendency towards violence and apparently _theft_ aside,” Cisco says. “What do they like in common?”

“Nothing?” Shawna says. “Like, seriously. Hartley’s right; they’re total opposites. Angry versus calm. Direct versus backhanded. Extrovert versus introvert. Practical engineering versus theoretical math. Rory collects people – look at us! – while I’m pretty sure Snart doesn’t like anybody but his sister.”

“Think we could get her involved?” Jessie asks. 

“She’s not in the program,” Hartley says. “Snart won’t let her join up, not in any field – she’s a really good mechanic, from what I hear, but she works over by the Wall instead.”

“How’d he stop her?” Iris asks, frowning. “I’ve met Lisa; she doesn’t take _anyone’s_ shit, not even Snart’s, and she’s definitely got no tolerance for any type of patriarchal protective bullshit.”

“I’m pretty sure he just asked,” Barry says, shaking his head. “I have no idea. It’s probably tied into the whole Rory-Snart fiasco, since I _know_ she visits Rory nearly as much as she visits Snart. Just not, you know, together.”

“So that’s one thing they have in common, right? Lisa?”

“You’re kidding. She never sees them at the same time and she clearly knows them better than any of _us_. The only thing they have in common is their tendency to work too hard and maybe their very vocal dislike for authority.”

“Huh,” Cisco says.

Everyone turns in unison to stare at Cisco, who’s looking thoughtfully into the distance with that familiar “I’ve got an idea!” expression on his face.

“You’ve got something,” Barry says happily. “I knew we’d be able to get _something_ if we all worked together on it. C’mon, Cisco, spill.”

“I dunno, guys,” he says, making a face. “Might not be the best idea.”

“Cisco,” Jessie says, reaching out to grab his shoulder. “This is _Rory_. We all owe him. Or, I guess, for you it’d be more Snart, right? You like the guy, terror and all, don’t lie.”

“Snart grows on you,” Cisco allows. “But, you know, like _fungus_.”

“He’s backed you up on all of those proposals everyone else thought were dumb,” Barry points out.

Cisco scowls, but nods. 

“So what’s the idea?” Iris pushes. 

“Yeah, Cisco,” Jax says. “Tell us. If it’s a tech issue, we can help fix it up.”

“Well, it’s kinda embarrassing,” Cisco says, putting his chin on his knees. “So, back when the whole Jaeger program was really getting underway, maybe three years back or so, I was…okay, please keep in mind this is before I got hired here, okay? So I was in a lot of internet chatrooms.”

“What _type_ of chatrooms?” Hartley says suspiciously.

“You know,” Cisco says, shifting awkwardly. “Sci fi chatrooms, tech chatrooms…singularity chatrooms…”

“Oh, _god_ ,” Ray says, making a face. “Not those terrible ones that kept talking about how making the Jaegers was going to inevitably lead to the so-called ‘real’ apocalypse because they’d be used against humanity when the computers took over? ...not that I would know anything about those.”

“I was young and stupid,” Cisco replies, covering his face. “And also I didn’t have a lot of real world friends to pull my head out of my ass, okay? Luckily I’d met Caitlin and Stein and Harry at a bunch of tech conferences or I wouldn’t have taken the job here at all.”

“What does this have to do with making a Jaeger for Rory and Snart?” Barry asks.

“So the people I was talking to were all convinced that the Jaegers were going to go evil, right? So I started working on some tech in my free time. But, uh, tech designed to stop Jaegers, not Kaiju.”

“Hey!” Barry says indignantly. “The only Jaeger that was active three years back was the Flash! When I was still going solo!”

“Yeeeeeeeah…okay, it was anti-Flash tech,” Cisco confesses. “But it never got out of the development stage!”

“Down, Barry,” Iris says sternly. “You know Cisco doesn’t still think that way.”

Barry sighs and pouts at Cisco, who gives him sad puppy eyes in return. Barry manages to hold on to his ire for exactly 30 seconds before visibly cracking and waving a hand at Cisco. “Don’t worry about it, it’s fine, I know you didn’t mean it.”

“Oh, good. Anyway, I came up with two ideas on how to fight a speedster Jaeger like the Flash – obviously, the first thing you need to do is to counter the speed. You can do that either by slowing it down or speeding it beyond its limits and making it glitch. For the first one, I got the idea that you could use a cold field to slow down everything in a given area, project a field so cold, approaching absolute zero, that the Jaeger’s atoms get slowed down. For the second idea, you could use a heat wave to make the atoms move really fast until they burned. Or melted. Or burst…”

“Thanks, we get the idea,” Wally says hastily. He never liked thinking of anything happening to his precious Jaegers. “So which one were you thinking for them?”

“Well, that’s the thing – Snart’s an obvious candidate for something like the cold field attack, with his scary brain for planning things, but Rory…”

“But Rory’s a pyromaniac,” Jessie objects. “He’d clearly prefer the heat wave attack.”

“So why not both?” Jax says, getting where Cisco is going with this. “We’ve been saying over and over how different they are, right? Like, heat and cold style opposites. Maybe Rory can build a Jaeger that uses _both_ heat and cold attacks!”

“Exactly!”

It takes all of them, working together, about three weeks to build some vaguely useable tech out of the rough blueprints that Cisco dug up out of storage. More specifically, at the bottom of a drawer near an out-of-date D&D manual and a Pokémon game that Cisco had apparently been looking for ‘forever.’ The people Jax collected for his little conspiracy are all very smart, but they work together like a bunch of cats – which is to say, not at all. Jax assigns himself the job of herding them in between his PT sessions. It's a giant pain in the ass, but eventually they manage to churn out something that theoretically would work. Good to know that the theory of "shove enough geniuses into a room and they will fix the problem" actually works; Jax is notably more confident in the ability of the PPDC science department to eventually science their way out of this war.

They present the tech to Rory all together with expressions not unlike puppies proudly bringing home their first dead pigeon, but Rory takes the plans and the prototypes and disappears into his office for a week solid.

They take that as a good sign.

\--------------------------

Rory more or less offloads Weather Wizard to the other mechs entirely and focuses exclusively on the new Jaeger he’s building, which he’s been almost crazily possessive of. Jax is okay with that – he is having _so much fun_ designing a Jaeger and ordering the others around about how to fix it up as he goes through his recovery. He can see why Rory likes it so much.

The other mechs are happy to take orders from him – Jessie and Wally are just as bright as he is, so he forestalls any issues there by pulling them into the whole design process, asking their input and having debates that run late into the night or through his PT sessions about various types of detail work: what type of hydraulics system they should put in the knees, if there was a way to make the cockpit more streamlined, the articulation of the wrist versus the elbow for maximum punching power.

Shawna is everywhere, as always; it’s that bizarre ability she has to appear and disappear at will, showing up just long enough to get approval for a change she wants to make and then gone before he can protest, and that makes debating with her hard – luckily Jax likes most of her changes, so it’s not like it’s a problem. She _really_ wants final say over the paint scheme, which Jax is more than happy to give to her. 

Ray is delighted that he has someone to talk design with which, hey, Jax is totally into now. They put their heads together on Ray’s new tech for ATOM, some of which is actually pretty decent. Some of it is less so. About fifty percent of Ray’s problems seem to stem from his absolute inability to differentiate between good ideas and terrible ideas.

Jax starts working with Grey again; after a long talk about Intellect vs. Physicality, they end up trading roles during clean-up operations, with Grey picking up buildings and Jax keeping a keen eye out for people who might get hurt from falling wreckage, and it works out pretty well, though obviously they’ll stick to what they know works for Kaiju battles. The Flash is effectively covering for them with the Kaiju while they’re out on limited duty only, with a few able assists from the Hawk.

Jax’s leg slowly gets better. It isn’t ever going to take him to football stardom, but Jax figures that he’ll probably be able to get the Jaeger program to pay for college anyhow. You don’t need perfect running form to pilot a Kaiju, anyway – though the way he and Barry race up and down the shoreline might make you think otherwise, but that’s only because the rivalry between the football team and the track & field guys will never die.

He gets a pass to go visit his mom and grandma, which helps a lot. They don’t take too kindly to his moping and there’s nothing like some good old-fashioned tough love to get his ass into gear. Rory comes with him, grumbling about needing to pick something up in Central anyway, and they think Rory is great on sight, which means Jax gets to boast about how awesome and discerning his family is to all the other mechanics for _weeks_ , because most people need some time to get used to Rory’s…Rory-ness. 

Jax starts getting back into the swing of things.

Life, which seemed like it had ended, moved on.

Jax actually ends up meeting his newest friends, the Mardon brothers, while out doing karaoke with Iris, Barry, Cisco, Wally and Caitlin. Technically, they’re on the way back from karaoke. Also technically, they don’t so much meet them as they _encounter_ them, as they’re all kind of drunk and making bad decisions like walking through dark alley shortcuts back to the Shatterdome, and that’s when the Mardon brothers jump out of a shadowy corner to mug them at knifepoint.

Barry spends the entire time giggling madly – he’s such a lightweight – and Cisco has like fifteen or twenty different pockets to search through to try to find his wallet, and Wally and Jax keep rolling their eyes at each other (it’s hard to keep serious when Barry’s giggling hits that incredibly high pitch and how extremely awkward-looking the Mardons are getting as time drags on) and then Caitlin exclaims, “You should _totally_ come back with us!”

The older brother stares at her like she’s gone nuts. “…are you talking to us?” he asks hesitantly. 

“You and your…uh…friend here? Whatever. You two are totally synced up! It’s sooo cool!” she declares, slurring more than a little. “Lemme – here, hand me back my purse for a minute? I might have some quickie DNA tests we can run, see if you’ve got the right sort of set-up for Jaeger piloting…”

“Hold on now,” the younger Mardon says. “Jaeger piloting? What – oh, crap, you’re Barry Allen, aren’t you?”

“Yep!” Barry says in between giggles. “Did you know that there’s a Flash shot challenge at the bar? You put a bunch of shots on the counter with sparklers in them and then you drink them all _really fast_. It was _awesome_. I am _so_ going to regret this in the morning.”

“Fuck,” the older one says. “I’m not stealing from Jaeger pilots. Clyde, give them their wallets back.”

“You seriously think we could be pilots?” the younger one says, starting to redistribute the wallets and purses (except Cisco, who’s _still_ looking for his; Jax doesn’t think he’s noticed that they’re not getting mugged any more). “You not just saying that?”

“Well, I don’t know quite yet,” Caitlin says practically, pulling out a plastic bag filled with sticks and grabbing one of them. “Say ‘ahhh’,” she instructs before shoving it in the younger one’s mouth. “Now you – what’s your name?”

“Mark Mard-mm!” The older one jerks his head back from where Caitlin took advantage of his response to stick a second swab in his mouth. Caitlin is much quicker with a DNA swab than you’d think from someone tottering on heels and clearly seeing double. “Mardon. Mark _Mardon_. And this here is Clyde.”

“Brothers?” Cisco asks. “Highest rate of compatibility among siblings, you know.”

“Uh, yeah,” Mark says. “You’re not actually serious, are you? This is some sort of weird prank you guys pull or something where you’re going to take us home and arrest us?”

“I feel like that would be pretty unsportsmanlike,” Wally says. “Don’t you?”

Caitlin sticks the swabs into the little box thing she uses for these sorts of impromptu tests. No one but Caitlin would carry that sort of thing around. “We should be able to get a basic result in a few minutes,” she says cheerfully. “This is brand new – less than a month old, but we’re hoping to be able to narrow down to Jaeger-compatibles much faster now – pity these things can’t be mass-produced, and you need to be a scientist to read the results, or it’d be much faster…oh, look at that!”

“Look at what?” Clyde said warily.

“You’re totally compatible! At least with the Jaeger program generally, but judging by the way you move, there’s a pretty good shot at it…”

Jax puts a hand on Mark’s shoulder. “How do you feel about controlling the weather?” he asks with a grin.

“Holy crap,” Clyde says. “This isn’t actually happening.”

“Follow us!” Iris says, tugging on Wally’s arm. “We can totally set up a test for you tonight!”

(As it turned out, the test has to wait until the morning, because they’re all very drunk and very loud and Rory shows up at the doorway to the garage with a welding torch and a pissed-off expression, but he also takes one look at the Mardons and agrees that they’d do fine with version 1 Weather Wizard, which is totally borne out in their test run the next day. Perfect match on the first try, go team drunk karaoke!)

Snart keeps terrorizing the science department, suborning lab space and computer processing power without regard for others as always. Neither Cisco nor Hartley ever get up the courage to ask him about whether he’s pining, but Jax does happen to witness some extremely optimistic girls try to hit on him and the resulting shutdown and _yowch_ , Cisco wasn’t kidding about that being cold.

Naturally, when Snart starts walking around without his habitual scowl or evil smirk and instead seems to have an almost cheerful look on his face, everyone in the “Get Rory and Snart To Make Up” conspiracy, which, sadly, is now known to all involved as the Parent Trap Conspiracy because the name stuck like excessively persistent glue, start to get worried. If Snart manages to get himself a girlfriend or a boyfriend before Rory finishes his project, then everything they’ve done so far is for nothing.

Cisco arrives late to their now weekly meeting and hears what they’re talking about, only to burst out laughing. “Oh, man,” he says, laughing. “You’ve got it totally wrong. Snart isn’t getting any or anything like that. His sister’s coming to visit, that's all.”

“What’s his sister like?” Jax asks. He's never met her.

Cisco pats his shoulder. “Some things, my friend,” he says, “you have to encounter to believe. Hurricane Lisa is one of them.”


	5. Chapter 5

It takes exactly three days for Jax to understand what Cisco means about Lisa, and that’s only because the first two of those days, Snart monopolizes all her time. 

On the third day, Lisa manages to convince Rory to come out for brunch and pours four mimosas down his throat, meets the whole crew and greets everyone she’s already met by name, implies she has some serious blackmail on Wells, jumps in feet first on fixing up Weather Wizard, finds out about the Parent Trap Conspiracy and invites herself to one of their meetings.

Nobody minds, because she is both evil and amazing and can do mind-blowing things to a Jaeger’s insides with a screwdriver. Jax might need to fight both Cisco and Caitlin for the chance to ask her out. He cannot _believe_ she’s related to Snart.

She also invites them all out for drinks and then pays using money she stole out of their wallets. Jax is starting to believe Rory about the whole ‘former thief’ thing, except in Lisa’s case he’s not seeing a whole lot of ‘former’ involved.

Turns out Lisa’s got a degree in structural engineering and a brain like her brother’s and was basically raised by a combination of Snart and Rory who have known each other since they were _teenagers_. She agrees with them that Snart and Rory need to hook back up and that they’re both being unnecessarily stubborn, gets them the information they were looking for (“Totally still pining. He’s still wearing that ring that Mick got him on their first job together – yes, I _know_ , and the bastard says he’s not sentimental, can you believe it? – and he doesn’t touch anyone else while he’s wearing that. I don’t think he’s gotten any since they broke up…I mean, I’d say that’s the reason he was such a jackass, but, honestly, he’s always been like that. He’s the absolute best jerk brother I’ve got – also, conveniently enough for him, the only one.”), and by-and-large just spends her time swanning around the Shatterdome like she owns the place. 

Everyone is totally okay with this. 

Well, nearly everyone. Wells pretends to ignore her and West keeps trying to find a reason to arrest her. Out of the three Admin heads, only Singh really likes her, and it’s apparently because she once remembered his husband’s birthday for him and – the way he tells it – may have saved his marriage. 

“We have to convince Snart to let her join us here at the Shatterdome full time,” Jax says to Cisco.

“I know,” Cisco says with a happy sigh. 

“It’s never going to happen until he gets the stick out of his ass,” Wally points out.

“I mean, I don’t disagree,” Cisco says. “I mean, I’m not going to say that it’s the only reason I’m supporting this whole matchmaker plan thing, but seriously, it’s up there on the list. Did you see her schooling Hartley on the properties of gold for that side project of his? _My girl._ ”

“You’ve never even asked her out,” Jax objects.

“I’m _getting there_. Also, she totally flirted with me once.”

“Really?”

“...okay, it was because Snart wanted to use my lab time, but it was _totally_ worth it.” 

“Yeah, fair.”

“She’d be much better off working here instead of over on the Wall.”

“Technically,” Wally observes, “as a structural engineer, the jobs on the Wall –”

He gets shushed by everyone. 

Somehow Lisa manages to find a place that sells this absolutely addictive Korean-style fried chicken less than four blocks from the Shatterdome that none of them have ever run across before, and they end up relocating some of the meetings of the Parent Trap Conspiracy there, hanging out and eating chicken. (Barry’s metabolism and ability to consume food in large quantities is something else that needs to be seen to be believed.) 

They don’t come up with any actual plans to get Snart and Rory back together, because rom-coms are apparently terrible guides on how to get a couple that’s not talking to start talking again, who would’ve thought, but it’s really fun to come up with increasingly implausible scenarios and see how Lisa shoots them down. 

No one outside the conspiracy will ever understand why everyone _in_ the conspiracy is totally unable to hear any references to horses or grandfather clocks without falling over laughing until they’re in tears and the worst part is, Jax doesn’t think he could explain it even if he tried. And he has tried. All he knows it's that it's Lisa's fault.

He has a cousin who’s about eleven years old who loves ponies and he’s never going to be able to talk to her ever again and he can’t even explain to his mom why. He’s suddenly deeply relieved that he lives half a country away.

It’s about five days before Lisa is due to leave – she’s already extended her trip by an extra two weeks, much to Snart’s suppressed-but-still-plainly-evident pleasure – when Snart starts talking about irregular activity in his models and staying up all night with his work to verify his readings.

Lisa sulks in a grandiose and theatrical manner which usually works to draw him out, but he persists. If everyone wasn’t totally aware of the fact that he was usually bend-over-backwards devoted to his sister’s every desire, they might’ve gotten upset at him for ignoring her like this. 

As it is, everyone’s starting to get a bit worried. Snart hasn’t left his room in days, even knowing that Lisa’s going to leave soon – and given that he knows that she has only a limited number of vacation days, she tells them, this is rather atypical behavior for her brother – and Jax isn’t 100% sure that he’s even eating. 

No one’s had any luck getting anything out of him. Even Cisco and Hartley just get ordered to hand over their notes without explanation. Neither of them can figure out what Snart’s thinking based on the research he’s asked them for; all they know is that it somehow relates to the Breach.

The day before she’s due to leave, a number of the mechs – including Jax – are totally slacking on their work to eavesdrop on Lisa, standing front of the door to Len’s lab (locked since her last interruption) and yelling, “You can’t hide from me, Lenny! Get your ass out here!” which she’s been doing with some minor variations for about twenty minutes now.

Eventually the door creaks open.

Snart does not look like he’s slept at all in the last 48 hours. His skin is waxy, his eyes are rimmed with red and his hands shake like he’s been mainlining coffee, which is probably the case. “Lise?” he asks, like he’s forgotten she was there.

Lisa’s petulance and anger disappear immediately. “Lenny?” she says with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

He rubs his eyes. “Well,” he says, no hint of a sarcastic drawl in his voice for once. “Unfortunately for everyone, not my math.”

“Your math is never wrong,” Lisa says loyally.

“Everyone’s math is wrong sometimes,” Snart corrects, shaking his head. “Models are by nature flawed; there’s no such thing as the perfect model. You have to keep in mind uncertainty and unpredictable results or you have to explain them, and sometimes there are things you just don’t know that you don’t know.” 

He lowers his hands and stares at his sister. “Lise,” he says hesitantly. “When exactly did you say you were going back to the Wall?”

Lisa crosses her arms in front of her. “Next week,” she lies without a blink. There’s no way Snart, master of precise timing, doesn’t know when her transport was scheduled to leave; he only asked because he wanted to give her the option to decide if she was leaving or staying. The Snart siblings are weird like that. 

“No chance you can speed that up?” he asks anyway, sounding like he already knows it’s hopeless.

“No can do,” she says sweetly. “Now tell me why you don’t want me here.”

“Because I’m pretty sure we’re three days away from a massive Breach event.”

“Your ever-fabled triple event?” she teases him.

Snart shakes his head, looking grim. “The readings I’m getting off the Breach have been confirmed by Hartley’s algorithms,” he says. “And they don’t read single, double _or_ triple. They read _army_.”

\-----------------------------

It’s not that Jax thinks that Snart is wrong, because Snart is never wrong when it comes to matters of math or timing (that second-by-second countdown thing he can do at the drop of a hat is just freaky, in Jax’s opinion, though Grey finds it useful. But also freaky).

It’s more that Jax would _like_ Snart to be wrong. 

After Snart’s announcement to his sister, he goes to brief the upper management. 

Lisa goes to call the Wall, tell them they need to put up all available shields and postpone any outside-the-Wall repairs; the science geeks retreat to the lab to run a bit of peer testing (their eyes and hair get increasingly wilder as the day goes on, a sure-fire way to gauge nerd panic and which bodes nothing good); the mechs retreat in their turn to the garage to make sure the Jaegers are as action-ready as they can get them. 

While of course the final distribution of Shatterdome resources is of course the mandate of upper management and the PPDC and the government beyond them, Barry and Iris go to call the other pilots on the sly. 

As long as anyone’s known Snart – and Barry’s known him since back when he was a CSI and Snart was a thief – he’s never been wrong when he’s _sure_ about something. The government, being stupid, sometimes panics at the magnitude of information he feeds them and makes noises about ignoring him, which upper management can _usually_ maneuver around. For the few times that they can’t, however, the pilot grapevine has been an invaluable resource for making sure the world didn’t end, thanks to certain pilots’ Jaegers “accidentally” overshooting their flight planning guidance by a few hundred miles and ending up acting as back-up for a fight where they were sorely needed. 

Barry reports that evening at dinner that Canary has promised to make it, while Arrow and Spartan are sticking back in Starling where they’re expecting a threat of their own. Hawk is already around, of course, and Jax and Grey test themselves as best as they could to make sure they were Kaiju-battle-ready, which, like it or not, they were going to have to be. 

No one wants this to be Weather Wizard’s first test run, both because the Mardons are still in training and because the Jaeger itself is only on its third or fourth improvement iteration and the mechs are still trying to think of other things to add – though, to be fair, the rain-summoning and lightning combo attack Jax designed is a work of art, if Jax can not-so-modestly say so himself, and the ‘snowball’ effect might not be that deadly but it would definitely surprise a Kaiju or extinguish one that was based on fire energy. 

Jax still doesn’t feel like the Wizard – or the Mardons – are ready to go out. But if the scale of the oncoming attack is as bad as the science wing is predicting, they’ll need all the Jaegers they can get in the field. 

Hell, Ray starts talking about maybe trying to take ATOM out, compatible drift partner or no compatible drift partner, or bringing Kid Flash (an early alternative Flash model, one of the first prototypes Rory had made) out of retirement and seeing if Wally and Jessie – who sometimes test compatible and sometimes don’t – might be able to fly it. 

By the time Jax wakes up the next morning – two days to go – the paparazzi have somehow gotten a tip about something big coming soon and are buzzing around like gnats. STAR Shatterdome security is (let’s be real) horrific when it comes to uninvited human guests, so they keep letting themselves in and bothering people who have _better things to be doing_.

It comes to a head that afternoon. Snart’s fallen asleep in the staff room – probably the first bit of real shut-eye he’s gotten since he first figured out what his models were telling him, and almost certainly only because Lisa was there with him, napping on his legs and keeping him from moving – only for both of them to be rudely awakened when a paparazzi shoves a microphone in Snart’s face. Snart’s face upon waking is entirely unlike his usual persona – sheer bone-deep terror – and Rory, who’s been working quietly on the other side of the room, leaps to his feet with a roar of anger, charging the guy and only refraining from throwing him out of the window when Snart snaps “ _Mick!_ ” at him.

By the next morning – one day to go –the tabloids have all printed their normal run of “Trouble at the Shatterdome!” stories, which are being discussed with pretend disdain and scarcely-concealed interest by the regular media outlets. The gossip grapevine _inside_ the Shatterdome is mostly busy sighing over the fact that Snart had put his hand on Rory’s shoulder and Rory had calmed instantly. Of course, then they’d gone and ruined it by immediately going their separate ways and being incredibly awkward about it afterwards, but _still_. Progress is progress. 

Jax is starting to think that everyone is getting a bit too invested in this love story, but hey, it isn’t like there is anything else to keep their brains busy while they fix everything that can conceivably get fixed. Well, other than the Kaiju, and thinking about that 24/7 would just be too depressing.

That afternoon, Jax calls home ahead of his usual schedule and has a long talk with both his mom and grandma about how dangerous his current job is and how he wanted them to know how much he loves them if he doesn’t come home, the usual. He can’t quite come out and say “something’s coming” as that would probably be a breach of national security and he’d signed a lot of papers saying he wouldn’t do that, but they get what he means. 

It’s a terrible conversation and there’s a lot of crying involved, but after it’s done, Jax has to admit that he’s real happy that they’re back somewhere nice and safe and land-locked.

In a fit of almost unbelievable sacrifice (for him), Grey takes that entire afternoon off of work to play Trivial Pursuit with Clarissa. 

Jax spends the night with Iris and Barry watching Netflix, trying not to beat his head into the wall and pretending to himself that that’s _all_ Grey is doing, even though he just knows he’s going to get the surround-sound version when they go into the Drift. (There are some things about your Drift partner you were _not meant to know_.)

At least he also gets to feel Grey’s warm affection and protectiveness, his endless inventiveness and passion for science, his bubbling enthusiasm for everything unusual (fantastic! astonishing!). 

The day Snart’s data predicts as Kaiju day dawns.

Everything settles into an uneasy state of waiting. 

It’s not often they have warning ahead of a Kaiju strike; certainly not one of this magnitude. The government is convinced enough to evacuate the majority of the coast, leaving the city with an empty feeling. 

They’re all keeping busy: Cisco is working with Hartley to test some new vibration-based bombs that will work better on Kaiju flesh; Grey and Clarissa are working on some new physics breakthrough involving transmutation that they think they’ll be able to install into Firestorm eventually; Jessie and Wally have discovered that they’re currently in one of their incompatible stages (much to the elder West and Wells’ obvious relief) so they won’t be able to run Kid Flash in this battle, and so have taken to trying to make extra weapons for the Jaegers (Hawk already has a kick-ass mace; was there any reason to gild the outside of it? Logic says no; Jessie, Wally, and Lisa say yes.)

Rory keeps working on the new Jaeger he’s developing in the part of the garage he’s walled off from the rest of them. No one says anything, even though Rory might be of more help on one of the other projects; any time one of the people not involved in the Parent Trap Conspiracy try to suggest as much, they get headed off at the pass. 

Everyone who is involved knows that Rory’s hoping to finish it in time to help in this battle, but there’s no way – he’s good and he’s fast, but there’s no way he’ll finish in time for them to test it out and go through the usual rounds of improvements before the Jaeger can get tried out by potential pilots. Heck, there’s not even time to install a pre-tested neural drift net in it; Rory has to use an untested one as a placeholder for now. Though, obviously, there is no way to get Snart and Rory to sit together for adjustments in advance if Snart doesn’t even know it’s meant for him.

Snart, meanwhile, spends a lot of time in his office, writing on blackboards and notebooks and any given surface available. Jax looks inside once and starts to suspect that the mess of junk in Rory’s office might not be entirely Rory’s fault. For someone who comes across as a neat freak, Snart’s definitely not one. Not even a little.

There are a lot of blueprints in his office, the same type that littered Rory’s office. Some of them are gorgeous, straight lines and designs even prettier than Rory’s; others are a mess, like they were drawn by a five year old. Possibly a drunk five year old. 

No one knows entirely what Snart’s doing – a lot of people both inside and outside the Dome think that Snart’s job ends when the theory is done and the prediction is made, but Snart’s been working himself to death trying to find an answer to _something_ in his math, and he’s not telling what to anyone, not even his sister. The only clue anyone has is that Snart’s been stealing a lot of the notes that Hartley and Cisco have been producing on vibrations; when they’re not busy working on their bomb, he pulls them both in for frantic conversations that go on for hours.

The pressure of waiting is almost intolerable.

When the alarm finally rings, the entire building almost give a sigh of relief.

Almost.

Jax waves at a distraught Jessie and Wally and goes to gear up. 

It’s time.


	6. Chapter 6

“That’s a lot of Kaiju,” Jax-Stein observes. 

“Yeah,” Barry-Iris replies. “Think the government will get off our back for ordering a ‘pointless’ evacuation now?”

Jax watches as _yet another_ Kaiju rips its way free of the Breach. “I’m thinking yes,” he says, Grey nodding along in his mind. “Indeed, I think they will come to see the wisdom of our advice very rapidly.”

That last bit may have been Grey speaking. It’s hard to tell sometimes, in the depths of the Drift. It’s easier to just categorize yourself as a bit of both until you pull yourself out. 

“I’ve got a better question,” Snart drawls on the comms. “ _Why_ are there so many? We’ve only had double events before, albeit sometimes multiple double events in different entry points.”

“I would’ve thought you’d be happy to be proven right,” Sara-Laurel teases. “You’ve only been ragging on all of us about a triple-plus event for how long now?”

“They’ve been escalating slowly up until now,” Snart points out. “Why the change? I’ve been trying to work it out with Cisco and Hartley, but...”

“As fascinating as that might be,” Wells cut in, “please stop using the comms to _chat_. How many Kaiju do we have?”

“Not sure – we’ve had four emergences from the Breach so far,” Barry-Iris reports. “But the Kaiju have been breaking apart into multiple parts after they get out, so we’ve got at least eight or so by now. You sure we shouldn’t be attacking them?”

“Keep in formation for now,” Singh instructs. “We need to see how many there are going to be to determine how we’re going to approach this.”

“I feel like I’m playing football again,” Jax-Grey says. “Gotta see the other side’s set-up before we decide how many people we want on offense, how many on defense.”

“Exactly,” West says. “We’re not going to let them slip past us and get to the city. That’s their goal.”

“And that’s your assumption,” Snart says stiffly. “It would be _helpful_ if we had a better idea of what their reasoning actually was.”

“We’ve already heard your arguments, Snart,” West says impatiently. The two of them have never liked each other. “We vetoed your suggestion.”

Jax and Grey both spike a little in alarm, so much so that it’s probably evident on their heart monitors.

“Wait, what suggestion?” Kendra-Carter says, sounding a little concerned as well. Normally the pilots get to hear these discussions.

“No worries,” Sara-Laurel sings out. “ _I_ heard all about it. I got you covered, Snart.”

“You didn’t even show up in time for the briefing!” West snaps.

“I didn’t get government approval for a relocation till the last minute; not my fault. You do know Lisa has our phone numbers, right?”

“Snart, you had _better_ not have gone behind our backs again,” West says.

“Or what?”

“Gentlemen, this is really not the time,” Wells snaps. “Mr. Snart, we will discuss your inability to take ‘no’ for an answer later. Canary, do _not_ follow Mr. Snart’s orders.”

“I don’t take orders from Snart,” Laurel-Sara says. “But as a pilot, I get to make judgment calls about what plays to run out in the field, and I happen to like Snart’s suggestions.”

“Ms. Lance, we’re in a potentially monumental life-or-death battle. This is not the time to question the line of command which, let us remind both of you, comes to us, not to him. So I repeat, do _not_ follow Mr. Snart’s suggestion, Canary. Please confirm.”

“Oh, shucks,” Sara-Laurel says. “I think my comm’s on the fritz again.”

“ _Ms. Lance!_ ”

“Can we focus on the Kaiju?” Iris-Barry says, audibly sniggering. “Laurel, Sara – we’ve got your back. Even if you can’t hear us because of that pesky static.”

“Oh, no, babe, that came through loud and clear. Total coincidence, I’m sure.”

“You guys are insufferable,” Singh breaks in fondly. He’s the one ultimately in charge during combat scenarios and he doesn’t mind the comms chatter as much as Wells tends to. “I think they’re done emerging – looks like it’s five Breach events for a total of 11 Kaiju, all but two of them mini-sized.”

“Eleven?” Snart asks. “That’s an unusual number.”

“No one cares about your math right now, Snart,” West says.

“Spread out and flank ‘em,” Singh orders, ignoring the other men’s bickering. “We need to take some of them out fast so they don’t get through our defense net. Atom, are you in position as fallback?”

“Atom’s ready and reporting for duty, though obviously we’re not online yet,” Ray says back. “Much thanks to Shawna for playing the part of my almost-but-not-quite drift compatible partner today.”

“Happy to help,” Shawna chirps. “Command, we estimate Atom can run maybe 20 minutes from activation before we get thrown out of the neural net for being drift-incompatible. We might be able to stretch it to thirty with migraines and nosebleeds and possible brain damage, but that would totally ruin my day, so let’s try not to do that, mmkay?”

“Thanks for the report, Atom,” Singh says. “With any luck we won’t have to activate you at all. Flash, you take point; Canary, back him up. Hawk, Firestorm, Weather Wizard, you’re our defensive line; hit anyone who gets past Flash and Canary.”

“Yes, sir!” they chorus.

Jax does his Flame On! routine – “Must you call it that, Jefferson? You do realize that we are not in a comic book.” “We’re in a giant robot suit fighting giant alien monsters, Grey; leave my comic books alone!” – and takes the left flank, where one of the mini-Kaiju (still several times larger than a house) is already trying to head in an attempt to avoid Flash and Canary’s blitz attack.

Jax throws a fireball right in the sucker’s face. 

About twenty minutes later, Jax is dead sure that Snart’s right and something is _weird_. The Kaiju are hard to put down as always – the mini versions are _easier_ , sure, thanks to the wonderful interaction of mass and gravity – but they keep attacking the Jaegers instead of trying to aim for the city and maximum destruction like they usually do.

“Hawk, cover my back!” Laurel-Sara yells through the comms, knocking two mini-Kaiju on their asses with a well-aimed Canary Cry. “I’m going in!”

“You’re doing _what_?” Singh barks.

“Relax, it’ll only take a minute!”

Canary activates the jets in her feet and zooms past the Kaiju, straight towards the Breach itself, dropping what may or may not be landmines as she goes, doing a quick circuit around the Breach before diving back to her prior position.

The Kaiju leap at Canary as she lands in the water, but Hawk’s already there with their mace, smashing it into the large Kaiju’s skull and knocking it sideways with a giant splash. 

“Much obliged for your assistance, girls,” Snart says.

“Snart!” Wells snaps.

“What the hell was that?” West adds, sounding pissed. “Snart, did you just have Canary seed our ocean with _landmines_?”

“No, I had Canary seed our ocean with observatory probes which conveniently _double_ as landmines,” Snart corrects just as one of the mines goes off against the side of an insufficiently wary mini Kaiju. “Don’t worry, they can be disabled remotely. Cisco, Hartley, start analyzing incoming data _now_.”

“I want to see that data,” Wells says, immediately forgetting his prior protests. “On my way to the lab now.”

“Canary, good job, but don’t break formation without warning again,” Singh orders.

“Got it, boss.”

“Oh,” Singh adds, “and I’m glad your comms problem seems to have been resolved.” 

The Canary sisters giggle in a type of unison that would be creepy if it wasn’t a direct result of the Drift.

“You’re a lot more understanding about this than Dad,” Laurel-Sara says, referring to one of the Admin heads of the Starling Shatterdome, Quentin Lance. 

“Luckily for me, you’re not my daughters,” Singh says dryly. “Please watch your back.”

Jax lobs one of the new Ramon-Rathaway vibration bombs at the large Kaiju stalking Canary and scores a direct hit. Good to know he hasn’t lost any of that quarterback skill. He’s _totally_ going to beat the Flash for “Most Popular Jaeger” this month. He says as much. 

“Not a chance!” Barry-Iris yells back, zipping by in a burst of electricity, starting to run circles around one of the Kaiju in the set up for a lighting throw.

It’s now been over forty minutes of battle and even with a formation designed to stagger and relieve them, Jax is starting to feel the strain. They’ve gotten most of the mini-Kaiju down – there’s only three minis left, plus the two big ones, both of which have taken some serious hits – but it’s grueling and exhausting. Even Hawk is spending most of its time on the ground now, focusing on using its mace, instead of soaring through the sky and dive-bombing like they usually do.

One of the big ones falls as Weather Wizard and Flash execute a double-headed lightning attack, Flash throwing and the Wizard summoning, both lightning bolts hitting at the same time to electrocute the monstrous Kaiju. 

The Kaiju pull back, hissing, drawing closer together back by the Breach, and the Jaegers advance on Singh’s orders, boxing them in and keeping them out in the deep water, away from the city.

“Twelve!” Cisco suddenly yells over the comms. “Damnit, guys, there aren’t eleven! There’s _twelve_!”

“What?” Jax-Stein says. “What do you mean, you can see there’s only –”

The lights in Firestorm flicker.

Those lights aren’t supposed to goddamn flicker; they’re powered by a freaking _nuke_.

“Jefferson, I can’t feel our leg,” Stein says.

“Yeah, Grey,” Jax says, tugging on the suddenly numb limb and trying to pull Firestorm back and away. “I can’t feel it either.”

The water ripples and this gigantic Kaiju with a dozen freaking tentacles slithers up to the surface, water foaming around it as it breaches. It has one tendril wrapped around Firestorm’s leg and it’s _sparking_. 

Firestorm’s not the only one it’s gotten hold of, either; the new Kaiju has its tentacles wrapped around some part of all of the Jaegers.

Shit, the Kaiju weren’t _retreating_. They were _luring them in_.

Jax suddenly has a fireball in his hands he wasn’t intending to create. He throws it at the Kaiju holding him as best he can, but it spurts out, wasting fuel and energy. “Shit, guys, my powers are on the fritz!” he cries out.

“Our Canary Cry’s going nuts over here,” Laurel-Sara reports, voice controlled but clearly unhappy. “Going up and down the frequencies both inside and outside; we have to shut it down entirely to avoid liquefying our own brains.” Canary is still hitting the Kaiju as best as she can with her quarterstaff, but her usually graceful movements are jerky, unbalanced. 

“My wings keep snapping in and out,” Kendra-Carter adds. “And my mace keeps sending out shock waves – ouch! – before I can aim it away.”

“Wizard, shut your wand down _now_ ,” Wells orders. “We can’t risk you making a hurricane or a tsunami right now.”

“Got it,” Mark-Clyde says. 

“What the hell’s happening?” West demands.

“The remaining mini-Kaiju are starting to move towards the city,” Singh says grimly. “Atom, I think we’re going to need you; please start setting up online.”

“On it,” Ray reports. 

“The rest of you – can any of you get loose?”

“I’m going to try to phase away,” Barry-Iris says grimly.

“No, Iris, Barry, don’t! It’s too dangerous!” West protests. “You’ve only managed to successfully utilize the phasing technology in lab tests so far, and that was _without_ a powers-hacking Kaiju on your tail.”

“No choice; Atom won’t be able to hold off three minis alone. Sorry, Dad.”

The Flash starts to blur. 

Grey thinks half a thought; Jax finishes it. He turns to the last remaining large Kaiju, not the one on his leg which Jax can’t shake off, and starts firing at it instead. It roars angrily. Firestorm’s powers might be fritzing, but they can’t let the Kaiju roam free with only Atom – and its 20-minute limitation – between them and the city. Hawk and Canary see what he’s up to and turn their own malfunctioning powers and weapons on the other Kaiju as well; Weather Wizard just starts hitting things with his now-defunct wand.

Atom flies out and grows large, towering over the remaining mini-Kaiju. “Dwarf-star alloy impromptu field test number one is a go; we’re functioning fine,” Ray-Shawna reports. “One squished mini-Kaiju coming your way.”

Jax takes a moment to admire Atom’s set up to literally kick one of the minis back; it’s practically professional. He’s going to bet that was all Shawna; he’s seen Ray try to play football, it was painful.

“I’m out!” Barry-Iris calls out, managing to come back out of their phase a hundred yards away without having shaken their entire chassis into pieces. “Going to help Atom!” Flash zooms back towards the mainland to help fight the minis. 

The rest of the Jaegers aren’t having nearly as much luck getting free. Firestorm’s paralysis is extending up to the hip and their fire powers are starting to go on and off at totally random intervals.

Canary suddenly emits her Cry, nearly hitting Firestorm. “Whoa, there, Canary!” he calls out. “I thought you turned that off!”

“I thought so too,” Sara-Laurel says, not sounding happy. “I think Squid-boy here’s not just draining our powers; it’s trying to hack our systems entirely. We’re not at the point of ejecting ourselves; I think if we do that, the Kaiju will try to take over the system entirely, and I’m not willing to let them do that.”

“Damnit, there’s got to be something we can do,” Singh roars over the comms. “Science, give me something!”

“We’re _working on it_ ,” Snart hisses.

“Hey, Snart,” Rory’s voice breaks into the comms. Rory doesn’t usually get involved in these discussions, preferring to let his Jaegers speak on their own.

“You got something to add, Rory?” West asks hopefully.

“Can’t tell you anything ‘bout the creatures or the Jaeger issues unless I get a closer look,” Rory says dismissively.

“Then what do you want?” Snart snaps.

“Come down to the garage.”

“ _Now?_ ”

“Yeah, now. I’ve got something I want to show you.”

“It’s not really the time –”

“Lenny.” Rory’s voice is uncharacteristically quiet. “Trust me?”

Silence on the comms.

Everyone’s holding their breaths, the Jaegers fighting on instinct as everyone strains their ears.

“…I’ll be there in three,” Snart says reluctantly. “Hartley, take my comm; keep analyzing incoming data; Cisco, work with the mechs to see if you can figure out a way to disrupt whatever the hell that thing’s doing.”

A few heartbeats more of silence.

“Holy crap, do you think it’s..?” Iris-Barry exclaims while literally jump-tackling one of the mini Kaiju. Jax wouldn’t have thought a Jaeger was flexible enough for that sort of maneuver, but the Flash was always special that way. 

“No way!” Ray-Shawna says, equally excited. “It hasn’t gone through any improvement runs –”

“There haven’t even been any compatibility tests –” Hartley interjects from the mainland.

“This _is_ Rory we’re talking about; if anyone could –” Jax-Stein objects, with Grey picking up all he needs to know about the Parent Trap Conspiracy from Jax’s mind. 

“But in such a limited time? It seems –”

“He has been pretty single-minded about it; it’s technically plausible for it to be done from a purely technological standpoint, if doubtful –”

“What the hell are you all talking about?” Singh snaps. “And why are you talking about it instead of _fighting the Kaiju_?!”

“We’re multitasking!” Laurel-Sara protests as she reaches out with her quarterstaff to trip the Kaiju next to her. “Also, I’m not sure if we’ve explained this before, but we’re _literally being paralyzed_ ; if now isn’t the time to gossip, when is?”

“You have got to be kidding me!”

“No, we’re definitely getting paralyzed,” Mark-Clyde says thoughtfully.

“I meant about the gossip,” West huffs. There’s a pause. “What’s the gossip, anyway?”

Laurel-Sara cackles over the comms. 

“Rory’s building a new Jaeger –” Jax explains.

“That’s hardly news.”

“– for himself and Snart.”

“That’s a _terrible_ idea,” West says. “Besides, they’re not drift-compatible.” A pause. “Are they?”

“Rory thinks they are,” Cisco volunteers. “And he’s usually a pretty good judge.”

“Even if they were, they don’t have time to test it,” Wells says. “Regardless, Snart isn’t medically fit enough to pilot a Jaeger.”

“While normally I would agree with you,” Hartley says politely (he’s always polite to Wells), “I would point out that this is Rory and he would’ve known that going in.”

“At any rate,” Wells continues, ignoring Hartley, “while having another Jaeger on the field would be helpful, particularly as the Atom is starting to flag, I don’t know exactly how much it’ll add given that the main remaining Kaiju is doing nothing but taking over the _other_ Jaegers. Even the Flash can’t get too close to any of you because you keep shooting off your tech everywhere.”

“This would be a good time to mention the anti-Jaeger tech that we gave Rory to work with, wouldn’t it?” Cisco says meekly.

“You’re kidding me,” West says flatly.

“Dad, stop whining,” Iris-Barry says, punching the head off of one of the remaining mini-Kaiju. “Atom, how’re you doing?”

“Uh, not so good,” Ray-Shawna reports. “I’m not at the blinding migraine stage, but I am starting to bleed. Just my nose, though! We’re, uh, gonna shrink back down to regular size now in case of an unexpected expulsion.”

“Good idea,” Singh says. “On the bright side, we’re down to three – one mini, one Kaiju, and the Jaeger-eating one.”

“We could call it Jaeger Eater!” Cisco chimes in. 

“I’m calling this one Squid-boy,” Laurel-Sara announces. “Sorry, Cisco; I’m too pissed off at this fucker to give him an impressive name like Jaeger Eater.”

“Fair, fair…”

“Atom, go after mini in what time you have left,” Singh instructs. “Flash, try to lure the other Kaiju back to the water if you can; get it out of the city and focus your efforts on this one. I know we’ve gotten reliant on having more than one Jaeger and the Kaiju have gotten tougher, but we used to do these one-on-ones and barring Rory coming up with an untested Jaeger none of us have ever seen – or heard of – I’m afraid you’re on your own.”

“Gee, that’s cheerful. I’m on it.”

The Kaiju with the tentacles, which up until this point has simply latched on to all of them to drain, paralyze and put all of their Jaegers on the fritz, suddenly begins to move, the water around it beginning to bubble ominously. 

Jax wouldn’t have noticed it, but Grey does, sending alarm bells pealing in his head.

“Uh, guys?” Jax-Stein says. “Squid-boy’s doing something.”

Electricity begins to crackle ominously along the tentacles; Jax winces as he feels even more of his leg go numb and starts twitching in sympathy pangs with his Jaeger’s screaming metal frame. It’s his bad leg, too, which is no fun at all.

“ _Guys_?”

One of the tentacles jerked and suddenly Weather Wizard was being pulled into the water, not just being held still. 

“Clyde! Mark!” Kendra-Carter yells. “Guys, get out of there! You took a crack to the chassis earlier; you’re not water-proof anymore! You’ll drown!”

“The neural net isn’t ejecting!” Mark-Clyde yells back. “We can’t disconnect!”

“Do it manually!”

“We don’t know _how_!”

Grey says some very nasty things; Jax would be impressed with him if he wasn’t gripped in terror that he was helplessly watching one of his coworkers get slowly Titanic’d only a few hundred feet away.

“Give me a minute – I’ll come to help –” Barry-Iris cries out, but before Flash can break off battling the one remaining Kaiju by the city, Atom gives an abrupt creak of tortured metal and begins to fall. “Ray! Shawna!”

There’s no answer – they must’ve been unexpectedly thrown out of the neural net for incompatibility; best case scenario, they’re unconscious. The risk of sustained drifting with an incompatible drift partner is brain damage, coma and death; Caitlin hasn’t said anything on the comms, so with any luck it was just an abrupt disconnect, not any actual damage. 

Flash dashes over to keep Atom from falling face-first into the buildings by the shore. “I need to take Atom back to the Shatterdome,” Barry-Iris says. “But Wizard –”

“We’ll get Wizard,” Snart’s cool, familiar voice comes across on the comms. “You get Atom back to the garage.”

Jax twists Firestorm’s head to try to get a better glimpse of – yes, that is definitely a new Jaeger, complete and gigantic and _how the hell did Rory build that in such a short amount of time_?

The new Jaeger’s chassis is the classic unpainted grey that hadn’t been seen since the first few Jaegers, but its right hand glows an eerie electric blue while its left hand burns a dull red. It’s large – not as large as Hawk or Firestorm or a fully-grown Atom, but larger than Flash or Canary – and its design is slick and flexible, like the Flash. The gears that power it are mostly hidden, but man, Jax can tell just from looking at it that there were a lot more innovations in there than just the cold and heat tech that they’d given Rory. 

That explains why Rory could build it so quick: this is very clearly his baby, the project where he put all the innovations that the higher ups rejected. The chassis must have been sitting, incomplete, in the back garage for who knows how long. 

The new Jaeger holds out its left hand and blasts the last Kaiju with a gout of flame far more precise than the overarching fireballs that Jax has, moving in smoothly a second later to grab its head with its hands, pin a clawed foot into its belly, and rips it apart with a single action, tossing the remains, dripping Kaiju blue, back out to the designated pollution zone.

_Oh yeah._

“All right!” Sara-Laurel cheers. The rest of them mostly settle for hooting and whistling, pilots and Shatterdome staff both.

Snart-Rory zooms over to them at a perfectly respectable speed, making sure to keep clear of the water and the tendrils, and grabs Weather Wizard and _yanks_ it back up out of the water.

“You’re a life-saver,” Mark-Clyde splutters, clearly having already started to get wet. “And I mean that literally.”

“Please, don’t mention it, really,” Snart-Rory drawls and starts roasting the tendrils from a safe distance.

Squid-boy shrieks with rage and lashes out, both with tendrils and – more distressingly – activating their own goddamn powers against the new Jaeger, but Snart-Rory reaches out with their other hand and snaps up the cold field, which made all their Jaegers move _very_ slowly, just as anticipated. 

The Flash shows back up a few minutes later and starts flinging lightning-quick punches and electric shocks at the thing. “Any advice on the Jaegers, Rory?” Barry-Iris calls. 

“Get the tendrils off of ‘em, then have ‘em go off to a safe distance,” Rory-Snart orders, voice gruff and fond as always. 

“Will that get us our powers back?” Kendra-Carter asks.

“Sure, after a hard reboot. Manuel disconnect from the neural net – Wizard, I’ll give you a crash course when we’re done, just stick to fists for now – then shut down the core activation and flip it back on again.”

“Won’t that risk blowing us up?” Sara-Laurel asks, not sounding particularly concerned as the Flash and the new Jaeger focus on ripping the tendrils off of Canary first. “You always said not to do that.”

“I told you not to do it without supervision,” Rory-Snart corrects. “Now I’m here to fix it if you fuck it up. Just do the steps exactly like I tell you to and the risk of explosions is within reasonable parameters.”

“Dare I ask what you consider to be reasonable parameters, Mr. Rory?” Wells asks from the mainland.

“Forget _that_ ,” Cisco enthuses. “What’s your Jaeger’s _name_?”

“We’re thinking of calling him Rogue,” Snart-Rory drawls. “C’mon, hard reboots all around – there’s something I want to do _before_ we rip this bastards to shreds.”

“Ray and Shawna are okay, guys; they’re unconscious but I’m not seeing any immediate signs of brain trauma,” Caitlin pops on the comms to say. “Snart, Rory, is your drift functional?”

“Works like a charm,” Rory-Snart says, and is unable to keep the fierce satisfaction out of their merged voices. 

“What are you planning, Snart?” West asks from the mainland. “I don’t like the idea of keeping a Jaeger Eater –”

“Squid-boy!” Sara-Laurel, Iris-Barry and Jax-Grey all chorus.

“Keeping _whatever_ alive any longer than we have to.”

“The other Kaiju were there as a distraction,” Snart-Rory says. “That’s why we couldn’t identify the twelfth one until it began to extend itself; in order to have executive function on the level necessary to manipulate the Jaegers, it needs more of a connection back through the Breach – like an oxygen cord for a diving helmet or, perhaps more accurately, an umbilical cord mixed with a spinal column.”

“That’s deeply disturbing,” Jax-Stein says. He struggles with himself for a moment, then a second later adds, “But also rather fascinating. Tell me, Mr. Snart, how did you reach that conclusion?”

“Frantic data analysis,” Hartley says from the mainland. “Lots and lots of it.”

“What’s important is that it explains how they managed to push the Breach open wide enough for a quintuple event,” Snart-Rory says.

Jax can feel Grey’s brain rummaging through thoughts and feels the little eureka moments of enlightenment as they come, one after the other. He’s had those before, little click moments, but Jax is the first one to admit that he’s not a fully certified genius like Grey is, and it is _awesome_ to feel those moments of blinding clarity when everything snaps into place from the inside. No wonder Grey’s such an arrogant jackass sometimes.

Man, Jax _loves_ being a Jaeger pilot.

“You think we can reverse engineer the process and close the Breach?” Stein-Jax asks excitedly. That would be beyond belief amazing.

“Not all the way,” Snart-Rory says, clearly regretful. “But I’ve used Hartley’s models to calculate the frequency Squid-boy is using to keep the Breach opened wider than usual, and if we reverse those, we might be able to force it shut enough to forestall any other such attacks for a while. We’d be back down to singles until they figure out a new strategy.”

“What’s the risk?” Wells asks.

“We don’t have time to build a vibration bomb that hits the right frequency,” Snart-Rory replies. “We’ll plan better for next time, should we have one. We’re going to have to use an alternative.”

“Stop pussyfooting around the issue,” Wells snaps. “It doesn’t become you – _either_ of you. What’s the risk? If this was risk free, you wouldn’t be dragging your feet telling us.”

“We’re basically going to need to stick Flash halfway into the Breach,” Snart-Rory says. “Canary, Hartley’ll feed you the frequency you need to set your Cry at; Flash, you’re the key here – I’m going to need you to modulate your phasing tech so that you’re going at the same rate as Canary’s Cry. The rest of us will box you in and act as echo points to amplify the effect.”

“You’re not sending Flash into the goddamn Breach!” West exclaims.

“Yes, he is,” Singh says grimly. “Snart – do it.”

“ _David –_ ”

“We can’t have another incursion like this, Joe!” Singh snaps. “Even with all our Jaegers, we’re only human; we need some downtime between attacks or we’re all going to burn out. I’m sorry, but the gain is worth the risk. Barry, Iris?”

“We’ll do it,” Barry-Iris says. “Sorry, Dad. Cisco, Hartley – what’s the speed we need to hit?”

“Sending to you now,” Cisco reports. “Wells – the rest of the data is there –”

“I see it,” Wells says. “Give me two minutes; I want to review it before we do anything stupid and potentially irreversible.”

Snart manages to resist going back and shoving a giant metal fist down Wells’ throat for questioning his math, which Jax thinks is really big of him.

“Move into position in the meantime,” Singh orders.

The Jaegers move, avoiding Squid-boy, who is lashing out at them, trying to get another hold, but doesn’t seem to have figured out what they’re up to. 

“Your math, Mr. Snart,” Wells says, “is unfortunately as sound as it ever is. David, it should work.”

“Then we’re going forward.”

“Flash, I’ll use my cold field to make sure you don’t get sucked in,” Snart-Rory says. 

“Wish me luck!” Barry-Iris says and activates all of their speedster tech to dash forward straight into the treacherous Breach.

Canary starts her Cry and Rogue moves forward, activating the cold field, and….well, it’s all very anti-climatic with Barry buzzing away as he sinks into the Breach, Squid-boy flailing its tentacles at them, the sound of Canary’s Cry bouncing off of the Jaeger frames and getting louder and louder until there’s an almost audible _pop_ of sound.

Followed by a gigantic wave of oppressively silent force that knocks everybody backwards into the deep water. 

“Sinking!” Jax yelps. Just Jax – he’s been knocked out of the Drift. That was a hell of a boom.

“Everybody brace yourself!” Snart’s voice sounds uncharacteristically concerned – which is no doubt wild panic in anyone else. “That blast is coming back to us and it’ll try to suck everyone into the Breach. Brace yourselves _now_!”

Snart and Rory manage to get back into the Drift and get their hands wrapped around the Flash’s chassis, pulling it out of the Breach right before that wave of force hits them in reverse.

It’s all Jax and Grey can do, working separately, not to get sucked in by the wave of force.

Squid-boy screams in Kaiju rage.

Canary screams back, equally enraged, and uses the momentum of the reverse blast to launch her quarterstaff into the bulky body of the tentacled Kaiju.

And then everything is silent.


	7. Chapter 7

Jax’s ears are ringing. “Hey, Grey,” he calls out to the man next to him in the cockpit. Everything is strangely dark.

Grey blinks and shakes his head, clearly trying to clear it. “Jefferson?”

“I’m good.” Jax reaches up and tries to adjust the comms headpiece on his ear, trying to see if it was still functional. It crackles a little with static. “How’s everyone doing?” he asks.

“Fine, I think?” Kendra says.

“I hate all of you,” Mark says. “Also, our cockpit is starting to fill with water again, but at least we’re not stuck in the Drift. Clyde, you good?”

“Let’s get out of here before we get soaked.”

“How are Barry and Iris?” West’s voice crackles over the comms. 

“We’re good!” Iris says. “I…think the Flash may be missing its feet, though.”

“You’re kidding me,” Rory says.

“It was your plan! You can’t be angry at us!”

“At least it’s just the feet,” Jax offers. “We’ve only had to replace them what, six times this year?”

“Six times over _two_ years, thank you very much!”

“Barry. You’re not helping.”

“Let’s get back to shore, shall we?” Snart cuts in. 

“Firestorm, hook back up and come help us drag Flash back to the garage,” Rory adds. “Canary, Hawk, you get Weather Wizard.”

“Bring back Squid-boy!” Cisco calls through the comms. “I wanna see how it works!”

“Oh, _biology_ ,” Rory says disdainfully.

“Yeah, well, engineering isn’t everything!”

“Cis _co_ ,” Barry whined. “We’re _tired_.”

“And Squid-boy’s gonna get lost in the ocean if you don’t bring him back,” Cisco says mercilessly. “You can drop him off in the pollution zone with the other Kaiju corpses; that’s the best offer you’re getting.”

“Make your way back and report,” Singh says. “If you _can_ , bring…ah…Squid-boy.”

“Yeah, we can,” Rory says grumpily. “Doesn’t mean we’re happy about it. Canary, you get Weather Wizard by yourself; Hawk, Squidboy.”

“Why do we have to get Squidboy?” Kendra moans. “It’s _icky_.”

“I don’t trust Canary not to stab it with her quarterstaff a few more times,” Rory says.

“…okay, point taken.”

They all limp home, parking in the garage and staggering out of their respective cockpits. Jessie and Wally have their hands full trying to get to all of them; they’ve never had so many Jaegers at one time, and they usually have help from Rory in riding herd on the temps. Ray and Shawna are there and trying to help, but they keep having to sit down every few minutes, so it’s really just on the two of them. 

Rory and Snart emerge from their cockpit looking about as tired as the rest of them, Snart leaning heavily on Rory in the absence of his cane. 

All three of the Admin heads have come down to the garage for the sole purpose of glaring at the two of them. “What?” Rory says, seeing them.

“You disobeyed orders, subverted a Jaeger for your own purposes, took out an untested Jaeger with an untested neural net connection, used it to attack other Jaegers, and then you proposed and ran what may be the dumbest attempt to close the Breach since the government tried to nuke it,” Wells says crisply. “There’s more. Shall I continue?”

“Did it _work?_ ” Snart asks.

“…we’re still testing that,” Wells concedes begrudgingly. “Cisco and Hartley’s initial readings have been showing positive signs, though.”

“Initial readings, huh,” Snart says. “Funny how they were able to get those readings so fast instead of having to wait a few days like normal. Almost as if they were using my probes to collect the data.”

Wells glares.

Rory laughs. “What’re you going to do?” he jeers. “Fire us? Go ahead. Lenny and I could use the vacation.”

The way he smiles at Snart speaks volumes.

Snart flushes a little, but doesn’t dispute Rory. Keeps his arm wrapped around Rory’s waist, too. 

“You two are _not_ taking time off to go screw around,” West says. “There’s a whole city front to clean up.”

“Have fun with that,” Rory advises. “Like every other pilot, we’re going to go crash for at least a day. Not sure if you’ve noticed, but we just saved the world.”

His smile grows softer and he turns back to regard Snart. “Just like I told you, Lenny,” he says quietly. “You’re the best guy I’ve ever met. You’re a hero, and now everyone else can see it too.”

Snart smiles, and it’s nothing like the sharp-edge smirks he usually deploys. It makes him look ten years younger, and happy. “Like I told _you_ , Mick,” he says. “I really don’t care about that as much as you think I do. We’re good, you and I; that’s what matters. You and me against the world, huh?”

Rory nods and the two of them start to hobble towards the living quarters.

“Oh come _on_ , that’s _it?_ ” 

Jax would’ve placed money on that being Ray, avid consumer of rom-coms that end with a dramatic kiss at the end, but actually it was Jessie, who is now holding her hands over her mouth in horror. Though judging from Ray’s expression, it’s only the fact that he’s still dazed from the bad Drift that kept him from saying the same thing. 

Snart stops and his eyes narrow suspiciously as he looks around the was-totally-eavesdropping-and-is-now-pretending-they-weren’t room. “Mick,” he says slowly. “Exactly how many people did you bring into this crazy scheme of yours?”

Rory tilts his head to the side, considering. “…all of them?” he offers. “Except Admin, of course.”

Snart’s mouth twitches and he looks like he’s trying to look like he’s disapproving and failing miserably. Jax isn’t surprised; a giant surprise like this with a lot of participants totally plays up to Snart’s sense of drama.

Lisa has by this point pushed her way through the crowd and has a giant grin on her face. “You should totally use the time that you’re fired for a second honeymoon,” she says giddily, hands on her hips.

“They’re not fired,” Wells says testily.

“Good to know,” Snart drawls. “I’ll take that as a verbal contract.”

“Wait, _second_ honeymoon?” Singh says curiously. “Not first?”

Snart looks at him with an expression of dawning horror. “We’ve been married for _sixteen years_ ,” he says. “There are mandatory background checks on everyone with access to the Shatterdome and they’re supposed to be updated annually. _How did you miss this?_ ” 

Most of the room starts laughing, probably due to absolute exhaustion. 

Jax can’t stop grinning. He totally hadn’t known they were already married – and Lisa totally did, the little sneak. Man, now he feels even _better_ about the success of the Parent Trap Conspiracy. His mom’s going to be super proud of him, getting a married couple back together. She’ll think it’s sweet. 

Snart’s still ranting about background checks and security measures to an increasingly amused looking Admin staff. “– and have you even considered the likelihood of a security breach –”

“Yeah, that’s our cue to go sleep for a day like all the other pilots,” Rory declares. “Snart, either you walk with me, or you ride over my shoulder, your pick.”

“Are you kidding? I need to look over all of the Shatterdome security protocols at once –”

“Lenny, _go to bed_ ,” Lisa scolds. “I’ll look them over myself. West can hire me as a security consultant for the privilege.”

Snart make a face but grudgingly nods. “Fine. Make sure he gives you a good salary.”

“You can’t actually make me hire anyone, you know,” West says.

Lisa turns to him and smiles her sweetest, most impending-hurricane-strike smile. “Of course we can’t,” she says. “Let’s talk about it.”

With a laugh, Rory starts hustling Snart off towards the living quarters with a fond expression on his face.

Even Jax finds himself making a disappointed sound. He’s not a rom-com sort of guy, but okay, he’s gotta admit he _was_ kinda hoping for everything to end with a kiss.

Rory and Snart are almost to the exit door when Snart abruptly turns around and shouts, “You get exactly _one_ and you had better never ask again!” before grabbing Rory’s collar and tugging him down for a kiss right on the lips.

The entire room breaks out into cheers.

Rory breaks away, grins at Snart like an idiot for a minute, then turns to the rest of them and roars, “Now get back to work fixing my Jaegers!”

\-----------------------------

Jax sleeps for about twenty hours, just like Mick predicted, then he gets up and has dinner at some ungodly hour with a bunch of other similarly dazed pilots, with tentative plans to go straight back to bed when he’s done.

Luckily he has practice with the post-Drift fallout or he’d be worried about how much he’s sleeping. They really need to stagger the Jaeger pilots better to avoid having them all out like this.

Jax smiles.

Now they can.

“What was the plan before?” he asks a groggy-looking Barry. “If there was a Kaiju attack a few hours after the previous one?”

“They tried that once,” Iris says with a sigh. “Over in Starling. Luckily Barry and I were able to pull an assist. That was back before the government stuck its nose into when Jaegers could leave their posts to help others.”

“But we must’ve had a plan about what happens if the government wouldn’t let someone come and the only available pilots were asleep,” Jax points out. 

Rory staggers into the room at that point, blinking like a man who hasn’t seen light in a day (Jax sympathizes) and makes beeline to the food, collecting giant piles of it onto a tray. Jax suspects he’s going to bring it back to his room to share with Snart, who hasn’t made an appearance yet, so he quickly calls out, “Hey, Rory! What used to be the plan if a Kaiju attacks during post-Drift fallout time?”

“Amphetamines,” Rory replies, stacking a pile of dinner rolls onto the side of the tray.

There’s a pause.

“No, really,” Barry says. “What was the plan?”

Rory just smirks at all of them and wanders off.

“I seriously can’t tell when that guy is trolling,” Jax says thoughtfully, and heads out with a luxurious stretch and a yawn.

He comes to an abrupt stop when he opens the door to his suite, mostly because the lights are on and there’s someone there. Someone very familiar.

“ _Mom_?” he says, gaping. “What’re you _doing_ here?”

His mom turns to look at him, hands on her hips. “Jefferson Jackson,” she says, and Jax quails a little bit. “If you think for one minute that I’d see my baby nearly getting his stupid ass killed saving the world on the television and _wouldn’t_ come running to check up on you, you need to get your head examined.”

“It was necessary?” Jax says weakly. “Uh, and as you see, I’m okay.”

His mom crosses his arms. “After giving me and your grandma a heart attack!” she exclaims. “Now what’s this I hear about the Breach getting closed back up part of the way?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Jax confesses. “I’ve mostly been asleep. But Snart said it was pretty likely to work, and I’ll take his ‘maybe’ over a dozen other guys’ ‘definitely.’”

“So they don’t need you anymore?” she asks. “You’re still recovering from your injury, baby; maybe it’s time to come home?”

Jax is taken aback. 

“Come home?” he says blankly. “But, Mom, the war’s not over.”

“They have more than enough Jaegers here without you,” she points out. “You could come back to Central.”

Back to Central? The thought hadn’t even crossed Jax’s mind, not in the entire year he’s been here. Here is where he’s needed. Here is where the war is. But more than that, here is – here is STAR Shatterdome, with its familiar paths and weird quirks, like the elevator that needs to be kicked twice before it works or the one bathroom on the second floor that everyone avoids like the plague because it always smells kinda weird despite no one using it. 

Here is a job he liked, that he _loved_ , something that makes him happy to get up in the morning and sad to leave at night. He knows the Jaegers in and out now; he’s worked on every last gear, every last hydraulic pump, every last system. Hell, Jax _designs_ Jaegers now; Jax basically completed the Weather Wizard virtually on his own, with a few comments from Rory and help from his team, and now that he’s done it once he’s eager to do it again, maybe try to pull in some new elements, maybe try to design from scratch the way Rory does.

Here is his _team_ , his fellow mechanics, Ray and Shawna and Jessie and Wally, the guys that have his back on any crazy thing he wants to do. Here is Barry and Iris and Mark and Clyde, who he trusts to keep Kaiju off his ass in the middle of battle and beyond. Here is Cisco and Hartley and Caitlin and Lisa and the whole (now successful) Parent Trap Conspiracy; they haven’t even had a chance to celebrate their great success.

Here is Rory, who saved his life by kicking his ass when he needed it and trusting him when he didn’t trust himself.

Here is Grey, who’d given him a new purpose in his life.

_Here_ is home. Not Central. Jax isn’t saying he wouldn’t go back one day – a lot of the people here are originally from Central or might be convinced with stories of excellent coffee and good burgers to go back there after the war’s done – but not yet. 

He can’t do that to himself.

Jax looks at his mom, smiling a little wryly, and she smiles in return, although her smile is sad.

“You’re not coming back, are you?” she says, and it’s not really a question. 

“Not yet,” Jax says, stepping forward to give her a tight hug. “One day.” He grins. “Maybe for college. I’m thinking engineering might be the way to go.”

His mom laughs, a shaky little thing that sounds a little wet. “That nice Mr. Rory’s gotten to you,” she says, hugging him back. “You’ve gotten the Jaeger bug.”

“You’re okay with it?” he asks, anxious. “I don’t…” If this decision is really going to break his mom’s heart, he doesn’t know if he can do it. He couldn’t live with himself if he did that to her.

“Oh, baby,” she says, pulling him down and kissing his forehead. He’s taller than his mom; he’s never going to get used to that. “I want you to have your own life, and that’s what you’ve found here, haven’t you? Your own life, your own friends…” She pulls away and a wicked little smirk appears on her face. “Maybe even a nice girl?”

“Mom!” Jax exclaims, feeling his cheeks go hot.

“I’m just saying, baby, it might be time to start thinking seriously about –”

“I’m _twenty_!” he yelps. “I am way too young to have kids! Too young! Too young!”

His mom starts laughing, a different laugh from before, the big belly laugh he only hears when she find something drop dead hilarious. “Oh, Jefferson, Jefferson, your _face_ ,” she says, curling in on herself, eyes bright with mirth. “Your _face_! Baby, if you brought home a girl and said you were thinking about being a dad, I’d yell at you so long you wouldn’t be able to hear for a week. I just meant you should start _dating_.”

“Oh,” Jax says, and buries his hands in his face. “I knew that. Really.”

“So, any girls you want to introduce to mom while I’m here?” his mom – who is the _devil_ – says with an evil smile. “If they’re not brave enough to stand up to me, I don’t know if they’re good enough for you.”

Jax laughs, because that’s certainly true. His family’s something special and he’s been scared about bringing girlfriends home for _years_.

“Actually,” he says, thinking of something. “I don’t know if it’s like that, but there _is_ someone I think you’ll like…”

“Oh?” his mother says, putting her hands back on her hips and arching an eyebrow. “And what’s this ‘someone’ like?”

Jax grins. 

“Some things you have to encounter to believe,” he tells her. “Lisa is one of them.”

With that, he takes his mother by the arm and leads her out to show her around his home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The title of this fic is a double pun. It's a quote from the Bible (New American Standard, since it’s the first one that came up on a basic Google), the book of Isaiah:  
> "And the LORD will continually guide you/And satisfy your desire **in scorched places** /And give strength to your bones/And you will be like a watered garden/And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail./Those from among you will rebuild the ancient ruins/You will raise up the age-old foundations/ **And you will be called the repairer of the breach** /The restorer of the streets in which to dwell."
> 
> The breach, in this case, being both the literal Breach and the metaphorical breach between Len and Mick. It also works very well to describe a Pacific Rim AU generally. 
> 
> (aka, I AM A GEEK)


End file.
